When we knocked on the door, my friend answered and welcomed us in. There were toys strewn all over the living room and her little boy was running around the house in a ninja turtle mask holding a giant foam sword. We went into the kitchen and I unloaded the presents in my arm and handed them to her son.
He looked up at me all wide-eyed.
“Presents?” he said.
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
He immediately sat down and started tearing open the packages. A minute later he was staring at a shirt emblazoned with a hip-hop reference he couldn’t possibly understand and a box containing a brand-new not-yet-inflated hippity-hop.
He asked his mommy to put the shirt on him and she did, just long enough for me to take a couple of pictures of him in it. Then I opened the box and pulled out the big rubber ball and set about blowing it up for him.
A couple of minutes later he was trying to straddle it and ride it around the kitchen, but it was just a little too big for him to bounce on so instead he hugged it until he fell off of it, then kicked it around. Eventually he got his sword out and smacked it around until it went flying down the stairs and he just watched it disappear into the basement.
Then he got distracted by a quarter on the floor and he picked it up.
“Money!”
I fished in my pocket until I found one of those dollar coins that I can never seem to find a use for and palmed it in my hand.
“C’mere kid – you’ve got something in your ear,” I said.
He came over to me with a puzzled look and cocked his head to one side a little. I reached out, gave his ear a little tug and produced the coin.
His face exploded in amazement as he looked at me, then looked at the coin, then looked at me again as he rubbed his ear, searching for more.
“You always walk around with money in your ear?”
He just smiled and walked over to his mother, holding out the coin.
“Mom, there was money in my ear!” he squealed.
She looked at me and smiled. He put the shiny yellow coin on the table, rubbed his ears and looked into his hands.
Nothing.
Then he picked up the coin, looked at me with a mischievous grin and ran off.
The three of us sat around the table and talked for a while and eventually my friend’s husband came home from next door and he sat down at the table and we jawed for a while.
Before too long, the kid was back holding his sword and his father announced it was his bed time. His face sunk and he looked like he was about to cry. His mother told him to go say good night to me and my friend and he walked over to her, gave her a hug and then fearlessly climbed into my lap and gave me one.
“Thank you,” he said in his little voice and then climbed off me and walked with his dad towards his room.
My friend reminded me that we needed to be off, and so we both stood up from the table and gave hugs before we hit the door and jumped back in the car.
Christmas – it’s all about friends and gifts and pulling money out of little kid’s ears.
