Memorable Gifts

So what's your most memorable gift? Probably something tacky or horrifying, human nature being what it is.

But the gift I remember best I was neither a giver or a receiver. Just an innocent bystander.

It was the year my parents gave Toolboy his first Real Hammer. We were farm kids, and Toolboy has always been Toolboy, so I'm guessing this would have been the year he was six and a half and I had just turned eight.

Being a normal six-year-old boy, he left his gifts lying on the stairs.

Being a slightly more astute eight-year-old girl, I was dashing up and down the stairs squirreling away my loot.

And on one of the trips, came down like a ton of bricks (I always moved like a ton of bricks, even when I weighed 75 pounds) on the claw of the hammer.

I distinctly remember spending that Christmas evening on the couch, watching a festive holiday video, my foot bandaged and throbbing.

Yup, that was a memorable gift.

It's about three years until D2 is old enough for his own first Real Hammer. And it had better never get left on the stairs.