This morning I turned in my Angel Tree package at work. This year, it was for a seven year-old boy.
When I was seven, my parents gave me a hardcover copy of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. The book is well-loved and sits, to this day, on the bookshelf in my dining room. I tried to get things that I thought were interesting and that I would have liked when I was seven.
There’s a mixture of stuff — a couple of books (including a Playmobil retelling of The House of the Baskervilles), a Marvel Comics wall calendar, a board game, some off-brand LEGO that looked interesting, toothbrushes and toothpaste, two animated Batman DVDs (thanks, Dollar Tree!), a Beatles coloring book, a box of crayons, a yo-yo, and a couple of other things. Though it was wrapped, I was unable to fit a Bob Ross 300-piece puzzle in the box; I simply ran out of room, and no amount of rearranging the block like tetrominoes would have made a difference. I would have liked to have included a piece of clothing, but I have no idea what size the boy wears.
Participating in the Angel Tree program at work is something I try to do every year. I take it seriously. It’s important to me. Is the Salvation Army objectively awful? Yes. Is there a seven year-old boy who needs a better Christmas? Also yes. The latter outweighs the former for me.
Whoever you are, little dude, enjoy the Batman: The Brave and the Bold DVD and the books and the toothpaste and all the rest. You deserve it.