Unrequited Christmas wishes

 One of the things making the rounds on social media - I think it's done so the past few years - is "what did you REALLY WANT for Christmas that you never got?"

And you know? It's hard for me to think of anything much. I do remember presents I got that I had REALLY wanted - the year I got the Fisher-Price castle playset (which I played with for years and years), and the year I got the stuffed Fozzie Bear from the Muppets. And there were some years I got things I didn't know I wanted until I got them - there was a set of toys called Puzzletown, sort of a building set based on Richard Scarry's works, and one glorious year I got like three of the sets and a couple additional figures and I spent the rest of Christmas break building and rebuilding the little town, and running the train around it, and all that. 

I think that the things I wanted and didn't get were things I didn't ask for, because I felt like I was too old for them: A stuffed Grumpy Bear, when Care Bears came out. (Years later, I bought the Build a Bear version, when they re-issued them. And I also have a little one that I often carry as a travel companion). More of the Strawberry Shortcake dolls - I think I would have really loved to have every single one (and there were LOTS, especially including the "friends from other lands" like the girl from France and the one from "Asia"). Even if I had just lined them up on a shelf to look at. (I think I was like 12 when they came out, so arguably a little old for dolls - though I think my period of "being too old for" such things was shortlived).

Of course now, the things I REALLY want aren't things, and can't be bought at stores: good health and happiness for the people I care about, and some measure of true peace in the world, and enough time to do both what I need to do and some of what I want to do, and a sense of feeling at home in the world (I don't, always, these days). And more recently, of course, an end to the pandemic, though I am slowly realizing that's something I will never really get and instead the rest of my life will be calculating when I need to get booster shots and when I need to be stricter about masking in public or even avoiding gatherings. 

And I would love a few more local friends with common interests; someone to go DO stuff with. How lovely it would be to have a friend, for example, who liked to go antiquing, who would call me some day and go "hey, would you have time some Saturday this coming month and want to do the round of the shops" and we could just get together and drive somewhere with and look at stuff in stores and laugh over the silly stuff and of course we'd have different interests in what we might want to buy so there wouldn't be any arguing over "I saw it first!" and maybe we'd get lunch somewhere. Just, the change to not do things ALONE for a change. 

That's one of the secret things you don't learn about growing up until you have: you can't work up the same excitement over a random thing like you did when you were a kid. Maybe it's because as an adult I have disposable income, and I can mostly buy things? Maybe it's different for folks who don't have that?  I look at the ads they run every Christmas, showing kids tearing into their presents and going absolutely wild with joy when they see the toy they wanted, and....I can't think of any literal THING that would make me that excited as an adult. And, in a way, that's maybe a little sad? That that kind of excitement is less-accessible now, and that it's a more complex thing to get what you "really wanted."