Wish List

One summer, when I was reaching the high single digits, I set about a little strategic planning. First, I decided what I was going to wear on the first day of school.

Oh, wait, important detail: From mid-June through late August, I lived in a house that contained approximately 55 books.

A used book shop, ten minutes by bike, 30 minutes by foot, contained a close to a thousand additional titles, but only .5% of these were by any stretch readable. (Sample plot: Earth comes to terms with an invasion of gorgeous alien cat people. The inside cover teased an interspecies love scene which either never came to pass or was ripped out by a previous owner.)

Thirty minutes drive by car, a mall containing a B. Dalton contained a wealth of riches, but my allowance was about a dollar a week and this was not 1933. I.e., a dollar bought about 1/3 of a book, no more.

Also, I could not drive.

Nor could the only adult in the house (my mom.)

And in any case, we didn't have a car unless it was the weekend and my dad had come up from the city.

So basically, by mid-July I was so bored that my imagination could have powered the eastern seaboard. I'd read every printed word in a 2 mile radius, and I couldn't get any further on my 9-year-old legs.

Now that we've established the context: So, first I figured out what I was going to wear on the first day of school. Then I figured out what I was going to "go as" on Halloween. (Pixie, if you must know.) Then, I wrote my Christmas list. In mid-July.

It's not that I was a greedy child. I was just bored out of my mind. Okay, maybe I was a liiiiiiittle bit greedy. But in my defense, I had two, then eventually four siblings, and every single transaction in my young life was necessarily an elaborate negotiation. Not only could my parents not afford to satiate the every whim of five children, but God forbid any one of us inched so much as a micron north of the others in the continual "But X got Y and I only got Z" saga that was our childhood.

But in an odd reversal of some 20+ years of tradition, I haven't been able to cook up a Christmas list since the turn of the century. I go through the motions--people ask me for suggestions, I answer the best I can--but my heart's not in it. Not like the year I wanted the 11 1/2 inch tall Princess Leia. Or...no, it's pretty much been downhill since then.

And it's getting to be that time again--Saks just sent a silvery booklet of ideas, and the magazines are getting thick with "gift suggestions"--and I'm coming up as empty as ever. Or, to reference the lemon yellow handbag post below, the things I want for Christmas are not things common available as gifts.

Like, oh, a 12 page term paper on the roles of Cary Grant in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. I don't actually want the paper handed to me, I just want an extra 14 days to work on it.

Ditto the 60 page spec episode of "Grey's Anatomy" I'm supposed to turn in on 11/29. I'm more than happy to write the thing--looking forward to it, in fact. But why do I have to shove that work into the same month I'm writing...

A 60 page hour-long pilot spec for the USC writing division awards? Another great project that would be so much fun, if I didn't have to cram it into the same month that has to see me complete...

A 100 page draft of my thesis screenplay.

So basically, I need a time machine, a coffee bar installed in my living room and a miracle cure for my crippling sleep addiction.

Only 49 shopping days till Christmas!