Waiting on the world to change

One of my favorite memories from when I was a kid was Christmas of 1984 (give or take). I would have been about 12 years old. My mother, my little sister and I went down to visit my aunt Jan and uncle Chuck, and their kids, on Christmas Eve. We must have stayed a little too long, though, because before we knew it, we were snowed in. The roads were way too bad to drive the 30+ miles back home.

We kids were devastated. How was Santa going to figure out how to find us? (Yes, I knew there wasn't a Santa by then, but still!) Any way you looked at it, there wasn't going to be a pile of presents under the tree for Sis and I. Oh the horror of having to watch our cousins open the gifts that were already waiting for them, in all their shiny glory.

Unknown to us, mom had called dad and asked him to try to gather up our presents and make the treacherous journey from BFE to my aunt's place. I don't know what time he finally made it down there (I have the impression of hearing him arrive, but it's kind of fuzzy).

The next morning, lo and behold! There were presents for everyone! Not content to have us suffer the ups and downs already gone through, my parents thought it would be oh-so-amusing to trick me into thinking that I wasn't going to get anything good, anyway. They had me unwrap presents in a certain order...the first thing I unwrapped was a set of leather straps. (get your mind out of the gutter! I was 12!), then a set of stirrups. Obviously, these are parts of a saddle and I was quivering with excitement.

"Don't get too worked up," they warned me. Times had been tough that year, and they couldn't afford the whole thing, so I would have to wait to get pieces here and there. (cue http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWHniL8MyMM/">Johnny Cash )

Of course, they weren't really that cruel, they just liked me to think they were, I guess, and eventually the actual saddle part itself was brought out and happy tears abounded.

Oddly, their joke wasn't complete - they made me swear there was a Santa Claus before they'd let me have the whole thing.

Wait, why is this one of my favorite memories again? Seems more like psychological torture...hmm...