The Irony of Getting What You Want, Part I

When I was eight, I fell in love.

It was Christmas season and the family ran up to Great Bend one Saturday to do our Chrstmas shopping. I remember Mom needed to go to Sears to pick up a package she had ordered, and when we got up to the desk, right there in full sight of all kids who visited the store was a remote-controlled race car! Now it wasn't one of those expensive gas-powered ones that real RC owners used, but for twenty-five or thirty dollars, it was all but out of reach. Remember that this was 1983 and we weren't exactly rolling in the dough. Santa Clause would visit our house every year, but to even suggest that Saint Nick might find me good enough to warrant such an expensive gift was a bit wishfull. Be that as it may, I didn't care. I was drunk with the passion of the spirit of receiving and only came back down to earth after Mom took one look at the price tag.

Still for the next few weeks, all I could think of was the car. Teal with a silver racing stripe on the hood and a fierce looking lobo on the side, I could just picture myself at the controls, weaving through a slalom course littered with such obstacles as Lincoln logs and G.I. Joes. I envisioned myself as James Bond (the Sean Connery version, of course) saving the free world from imminent danger. In fact, I wasn't just behind the controls, my imagination put me behind the wheel and the green shag carpet of our living room became a jungle I had to traverse in order to steal some secret Soviet documents. So even though I got a bad vibe in the store, I just knew Santa would come through, especially since I had been so nice to Ms. Strauss, my second grade teacher who I swore must have spent most of her time sucking on lemons to achieve the look on her face when I raised my hand to ask a question. Never mind that I day-dreamed in her class all that month about the car.

On Christmas morning, my brother Chris and I snuck downstairs at 5:00 A.M. to snare our stockings, an annual tradition that I still keep, and I couldn't help but peer under the tree for any new developments. Sure enough, in the dim light of the colored bulbs on the tree, I could make out Santa's face on the wrapping paper of a few new presents. And about an hour later, high on the sugar content of pecan logs and heightened expectations, we woke up our parents (who probably hadn't gotten much sleep while taking care of our nine-month-old baby sister.) Like a ticker-tape parade I tore the wrapping paper into confetti and screeched with delight to see the teal RC car that I had dreamed about and just knew was out of reach. Mom made me wait until after breakfast (and sunrise) before I took my dream present out for a spin.

The first course I decided on was our front-yard sidewalk, not exactly an obstacle course, but a hands-on lesson in plate tectonics. With controls in hand and excitement pounding through my veins, I pushed the accelerator button with my thumb and unleashed fury. The wheels didn't spin out like I had expected, and the car took a few seconds to get up any speed at all. Of course before it could reach its terminal velocity of two mph, the allignment forced the car to the left and it flipped upside down in the yellow grass by the big elm in front of our house. Undeterred, I righted the ship and gave it another try, ten feet to be exact until the front bumper came to a rather abrupt stop at one of the aforementioned tectonic plates that had risen from the sidewalk like a mountain range. I was only starting to get discouraged.

It took a few tries, but I finally managed to keep it going in a straight line, save for the cracks in the sidewalk, but my imagination wasn't spurred like I had expected. I couldn't see myself behind the wheel like before. It felt more like having a glorified match box car, but even the match box cars I had allowed for more imagination than this. After fifteen minutes the batteries went dead and I walked in the house dejected. I'm sure I replaced the batteries and raced it more than that one Christmas morning, but no other memories stick out. The toy was put in the toy box and my imagination took over any time a Saturday-morning commercial would show me the newest toy on the market. What went wrong?

I had built it up in my head to be better than it was. Even if the car would have been a gas-powered beast, it probably wouldn't have lived up to my daydreams. That's the problem with imagination. Is this how we view life too?