I have been an avid fan of Reader’s Digest for forty years. I was looking over the December/January issue yesterday at the public library, where I work part-time, and decided I just had to share something I read with my followers. Keep in mind, I did not write this article. It is the property of the Reader’s Digest Magazine. I think you’ll enjoy this item. Please note: The original Reader’s Digest article had illustrations, and the wish list sometimes refers to the pictures, so I modified the text to make sense without having to see the illustrations.
A Ten-Year Old’s Letter to Santa, By Raquel D’Apice.
Dear Santa,
I am a ten-month old baby, and I am writing to you because my mother has been sending out my Christmas list to people, and her list does not in any way represent the things I really want. I don’t really want stacking cups!
And before you say anything, I know you’re ready to make the joke about ten-month-old babies and how all we want is the wrapping paper and the boxes. Touche´ Santa. Touche´. We do, of course, want those things. But I have a number of additional things that I want very badly.
My list is enclosed. Have a lovely holiday.
– Baby
- I want a laptop cord more than I have ever wanted anything. Please. I also want the power strip with the orange on/off button and the white label on the end of the cord. I would love these specific cords located behind my mother’s desk next to the air conditioner (whose cord I also want).
- I want the wall-mount entertainment center in the bathroom. (He is referring to the toilet paper dispenser.) I have no idea why my mother does not want me to play with this thing, as it is obviously a child’s toy. I would like one for my room.
- I would love a whole set of house keys. To eat, obviously. Only metal house keys will do. Please do not bring me plastic ones. I am not an idiot – I know that plastic house keys are not real keys.
- I want everyone’s eyeglasses. I pull these off the face of every person I meet, only to have them pried from my fingers and reclaimed by their original owner. I would love to have a pair of my own. Again, these are going to be for eating.
- I want the entire contents of the bathroom garbage can. I would love for this thing to be emptied out on my bedroom floor – particularly things like used wet cotton balls and discarded pieces of floss. If you would like to just take the contents of this bin and transfer them directly into my stocking, that would be fine.
- I want handfuls of the dog’s hair. This stuff is the best. I keep trying to pull it off her, but she moves frequently, making collection difficult. My favorite thing to do with it is put it in my mouth and then immediately realize that I didn’t want it in my mouth!
- I want the hole in the hallway floorboard. I spend hours looking at that hole. I keep poking at it. I know I cannot “have” a hole, as a hole cannot be had. A hole is an absence. Yet this is a list of the things I want, and I want this hole the way Gandhi wanted peace. The way the dog wants to lick my face. The way my mom wants me to stop pulling off her eyeglasses.
- I want the stuff that is all over the floor of the apartment. I have no idea what this stuff is. All I know is that i want it in my hands, and no sooner have I grasped its sweet, delicate softness my mother comes running over yelling something like: Stop touching that – how often do I have to vacuum the dang hallway?”
- I want the dog’s food. Every time I get close to it, someone pulls me away from it. If they don’t want me to eat it, why is is on the floor?
- I want a cell phone. I have no idea what these do, but it’s clearly a lot of fun, given that my mother never stops looking at hers.
- I want bobby pins. These are my favorite! If I had a nickle for every bobby pin I found on the floor, I’d have double the number of little metal things that I could put in my mouth because, go figure, I also totally love nickles.
Raquel D’Apice. The author works for Huffingtonpost.com.
You can follow her blog at: www.huffingtonpost.com/author/raquel–dapice
The Accidental Apologist 