A reminder: This is Day Three of The Seven Days of Pricklesmas Contest. Details here!
I admit it — I’m a compulsive list-maker and note-taker. But some people in my family have organizational impulses on a whole other level.
As I’ve mentioned, Santa was in the habit of delivering unwrapped gifts to our house for a while, until my curiosity (and greed) got the better of me. Once wrapped gifts began to appear on Christmas morning, my mother devised a special unwrapping system. She’d write a tiny number on each of the gifts, and then she’d tabulate a list of those numbers and the corresponding contents. She’d wield this list on a clipboard on Christmas morning, when the unwrapping system went something like this:
Me (reaching for gift): Can I open this one?
Mom: What number is it?
Me (checking): Um…5?
Mom: (consulting her clipboard)
Mom: (consulting her clipboard)
Mom: No. Not yet.
Me (reaching for another gift): How about this one…it’s 12.
Mom: (consulting her clipboard)
Mom: (consulting her clipboard)
Mom: Okay.
This back-and-forth would go on all morning, as my mother (and her clipboard) carefully monitored our present-opening. Clearly, she had a certain rhythm in her head of how she wanted Santa’s bounty to be revealed, and it was about more than just leaving the bigger gifts until the end. By controlling the unwrapping order, and creating a juxtaposition of “big gifts” versus “little gifts,” she was lending a dramatic arc to the proceedings. While one might very well perceive the clipboard as anal-retentive madness, at the same time, there was an artistry to it that I have to admire. It was a true presentation. And it’s that kind of perfect rhythm, that juxtaposition of major and minor reveals, that I strive to emulate in my storytelling now.
I guess you could say my mother gave me her biggest gift without even knowing it.
Holiday gift tag from Zazzle.
Kara LaReau 
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