Tonight we ended up in side-splitting laughter, reminiscing about our dollar store Christmas shopping days.
Let me explain: when the kids were little, I would take them to the local dollar store and give them enough money to buy a present for each family member. It was a fun, affordable way for them to participate in gift giving. We would usually go on a weeknight after school, and they would start the shopping expedition by grabbing a hand-held basket and a bandanna. The bandanna was to cover their selections, lest they pass a sibling in the aisle. When it came time to pay, I slipped them the cash and they went through the checkout one-by-one, keeping a safe distance from each other so as not to spoil the surprises.
When we arrived home, the kids would take turns wrapping their gifts themselves. There was one year they chose the most expensive gold-foil paper I had just purchased from one of those ridiculously over-priced fundraisers. I had planned to wrap a few select packages in the paper to make a stand-out display under the tree. Instead, it wrapped $1 gifts. But, damn, they looked GOOD.
The kids' choices were pretty predictable - a candle for mom, a garishly-colored stuffed animal for their siblings, and a tool of some sort for their dad. One year, Hannah picked out a delicately-sculpted floral candle for me, and it didn't survive the trip home without breaking. She cried silently in her bed until her dad finally asked what was wrong. They made a return trip to the dollar store to pick up a new one to soothe the devastation. Another year, Harrison got me one of those candles that has dried flowers in it. A few months after Christmas, I lit the candle in preparation for a party we were hosting. A short while after the party started, a guest took me aside and said "there was a small fire" - apparently the dried flowers had burst into flame. She put it out without incident.
Then there was the year Arlie gave several people a bag of rocks. Not just any rocks - these were those flat, glass marble things. There were clear ones and blue ones. I'm sure she thought they looked just like jewels. SHINY! Other years she chose a theme of resin sculptures - leaping dolphins, swimming pairs of dolphins. They looked like they had been painted by a blindfolded toddler, and always contained glitter accents.
Jeff was the lucky recipient of cheap plastic kitchen items. Spatulas, oven mitts, sets of measuring cups. If not a kitchen item, he was gifted a tool of some sort - a screwdriver or a clip-on light. Occasionally he would receive a new pair of sunglasses or a shoe-shine kit. There aren't too many dad gifts at the dollar store.
For a few years running, the kids exchanged the same brightly-colored teddy bears that looked like they had a bad case of mange. They were stuffed with what must have been the bare-minimum of fluff to be considered a "stuffed animal" and they flopped around in an ungainly fashion. They could hardly be called cute.
Some gifts were actually useful - note pads, nail polish, dish towels. As the kids got older, and especially as they started earning their own money, the dollar store lost it's florescent luster and pricier gifts from the mall replaced the BPA plastic wares from the dollar store. No longer did we take our annual gift excursion to the land of the almighty dollar.
I kind of miss those days. And I'd gladly take another cheap candle for one more day walking around, picking out surprises hidden under bandanas with my little ones. The gifts were cheap but the memories were priceless.
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