For the month of November I’m participating in a daily gratitude challenge posted by the journaling app that I use, Day One, and here’s today’s prompt:

What is a happy memory from my childhood?

I have fond memories of Family Christmases. I don’t remember anything from the Christmas celebrated in posted image, it being my first Christmas in 1958. 

Actually Christmas memories are somewhat lumped into one “memory,” typically with us kids getting up and gathered around the Christmas tree long before our parents, which in itself is a huge departure from our more typical daily aversion to getting up whereas my dad would be off to work long before we could be coaxed out of bed. Oldest sister Kathie would try to “organize” us (more like settle us down), believing that if we sweetly sang Christmas carols then mom and dad would get up and the gift opening festivities could begin. From there the memories are a bit scattered. One year younger brother, Matt, got so excited about the gifts that he threw up. Another year, dear old dad took it upon himself to get gifts for us kids (the normal routine being mom purchasing gifts “from mom and dad”), and the gifts were hilariously unflattering with one of us getting deodorant and someone else getting Noxzema face cream. I’m pretty sure that was the only time dad made that mistake. 

One year that stands out from all the rest is the year we were living in Northern California, but made the trip to celebrate Christmas at stay at Uncle Joe and Tia Maggies house in West Covina with their six daughters. Christmas Eve eleven kids found it impossible to sleep in the two bedrooms while the adults loudly partied long into the night. I don’t remember getting any sleep. I think that was the same year that someone, probably an uncle, gave me a toy Winchester-style pop rifle. It was an awesome gift, but being a puny kid, I wasn’t strong enough to pull the spring-loaded lever to cock the gun and had to resorted to sticking the barrel end of the gun stuck in the ground and using all of my weight to pull down on the level. It made for interesting “fights” where I had to get the “bad guys” to wait and stand still while I struggled to cock the gun before firing. But, we were kids and didn’t care and ran around playing all day. 

It had been rainy over the holidays and we were playing with an annoying kid from across the street of my uncle’s place and he got me so mad that I threatened to shoot him. He just laughed at me as I did my usual “shove the rifle barrel in the ground and pull down on the lever with all of my weight.” But what neither of us knew was that this time, when I pulled down on the level, the suction action pulled up the wet mud into the barrel, and when he continued to make fun of me and challenged me to shoot at him, standing point-blank range next to him, instead of just a loud pop, the boy got a face-full of gross West Covina mud. We were both shocked. He cried and said he was going to tell his parents. I cried because I thought I really shot him and ran back across the street. When my uncle heard the story he laughed and said the kid had it coming ‘cause he just little asshole. Fun times growing with cousins and mud rifles. I wonder whatever happened to that ol’ gun?