Christmas Past

In honor of Christmas, I thought I'd share a story about one of my more memorable Christmas presents. It wasn't something I received from a family member or a close friend, and I never got to properly thank the giver. Curious? Well, read on . . . .

You've seen Top Gun, right? Maverick and Goose head off to some special dogfighting school for naval pilots at the base in Miramar in San Diego. Well, Miramar wasn't that far from where I lived as a young kid and our next door neighbors were real pilots based out of Miramar. A guy named Jamie was the one who actually owned the house-- we would go for long periods of time with Jamie MIA, I assume because he was "out to sea." He rented or shared his house with some other people during the time we lived there, and when I was about M's age, the pilot who lived there was named Dan.

Dan was a patient guy. We went through a doorbell-ditching stage that year. For some reason, Camie and I and our friends thought it was great fun to ring people's doorbells and run away before they could catch us. Amy was young enough to want to imitate us, and I think she repeatedly tried this out on poor Dan. Of course, Amy was too slow to ever get away before they could see who it was. (Come to think of it, Dan probably caught us too but was too nice or amused or sympathetic to let us know that.)

Anyway, for some reason, Dan found our behavior endearing instead of obnoxious. That year my parents bought a house in a different area of San Diego, and we were supposed to move just before Christmas. One day not long before the move, Dan called me and my sisters over and told us this elaborate story about how he had seen Santa out doing test flights in his sleigh when he had been out flying his jet. (Amy's eyes got pretty round right about here.) Anyway, Dan explained to us, using his serious skillz (common to all Navy pilots) he managed to snag three gifts out of Santa's sleigh for us without getting caught. (I mentally pictured him somehow slinging a whip Indiana Jones-style and yanking wrapped presents off the back of the sleigh and into his jet. He must have had the cockpit open or something, right?) He handed out a present for each of us, and then made us promise that we would not open them until Christmas morning in our new home.

You can imagine our excitement!!

Moving Day came and went, and Christmas morning we opened the gifts like we had promised. My box contained one of these:

OK, mine looked a little different (hard to find images of watches from the 80's) but it was a purple and green Swatch watch. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with them, they were very popular, kind of pricey watches. My sister Camie had received one also. Amy had been given a very pretty sweater. Altogether Dan must have spent more than $100 on us bratty girls from next door. Swatch watches for 8 and 9 year olds?? (I think my mother about choked when we opened those presents. She was NOT expecting something like that.)

I loved my watch. I wore it all the way into college. In fact, Dan had gotten me one of the few kinds of watches I can wear, since it had no metal that touched my skin. (I'm allergic to some kind of metal-- nickel, probably. Anyway, it makes wearing jewelry a pain-- unless it's one hundred percent the real deal.) Dan never knew-- I never saw him again-- but he had given me one heck of a gift, and I got my use out of it for sure.

Merry Christmas, Dan, wherever you are, and thank you so much from the little girl who grew into a woman able to truly appreciate your gift!