"Want A Plane, That Loops The Loop."

“My memory suffers sometimes, thanks to all the drinking and drugging, but the brain has a funny way of cataloging events as it damn well pleases. You forget some of the good stuff, and you remember some of the pain. A lot of it actually.” – Ace Frehley

Now , it should be known that I don’t drink or use drugs and there really isn’t much pain that I can think of associated with Christmas, but Ace hit the nail on the head about half way through that statement. Both He and I stand in awe at the power of our brains and the amount of information they can recall in almost sickening detail.

There are things I can and will recall in this blog that I shouldn’t remember. Things that are almost impossible to believe I remember. Things my near and dear relatives may not remember. Undoubtedly, you will read this blog and at least once, think to yourself that I gotta be making this stuff up or this can’t all be true. Oh but it is. Every single word of it. If I emptied my brain of music, sports, Americana, pop culture and memories like the ones I am about to share, my head would snap back like a twig. There would be nothing inside but dust. This blog is written in a very conversational tone. If you were talking to me about the topic I am talking about in a post, this is pretty much what you would hear. Dickens I ain't. In no particular order of importance, here we go….

#31 on my list of The 31 Things I Love About Christmas is: Christmas Catalogs.

Ask my mom. Ask my wife. I anticipate the arrival of the mail like a puppy waits to snack on the mailman. Sara (the aforementioned wife) has told me she has never met anyone who is so obsessed with the mail and looks forward to it as much as I do. Steve and Blue got nothing on me.

Usually in the summer months, maybe mid-August or so, there would be a loud thud in our mailbox (gold, square in shape, with some kind of carriage ornament on the front). IT’S HERE! The JcPenney’s Christmas catalogs had arrived. There were always two. The standard issue one full of boring grown-up stuff like luggage, underwear, appliances, clothes and other junk that didn’t usually make my Christmas list. There was a small toy section in it if I recall but not much. Then came the toy catalog. Ah boy.

This would usually result in my sister, Rosalia, and I pawing through page by page, circling and cutting out desired items. Funny thing of it was, I never really wanted anything in there. I was just happy to have something new to look at. At the most I would circle all the baseball card sets and gift boxes or the Starting Lineup sports action figures. I wasn’t really into superheroes, aside from a brief spell of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mania. Nor did I have much use for Power Rangers, Batman or anything else of that variety. While I certainly had Batman sheets and jammies as a kid, I didn’t ask for them specifically, they just seemed like things I normal boy would want.

Okay fine. Christmas ’92 I asked for and got a Fisher Price tool bench set. Why would I ask for something like this? Those who know me well know I am not mechanically inclined and the only thing I can fix is a sandwich. I asked for it, so to model after one of my then favorite TV characters, Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor of Home Improvement. Not because I wanted to be a rugged handyman, but because of Tim Allen. This was the same year Rosalia got her Fisher Price kitchen set. She got far more use out of that kitchen set than I did the tool bench. Sorry Santa.

Service Merchandise (If that don’t take ya back…ours was in the same plaza as Greece Ridge Mall in Rochester NY, it is now a Petco and Panera Bread Bakery) also issued a catalog back then. There was also the Sears Wish Book. They would suffer the same fate. Dog eared pages, cutout pictures and marked up items. Often when we went to Grandma’s house we would look through the same book there. So much so, that often Grandma’s copies would disappear, so they would remain in one piece.

I still love catalogs. Got at least three different hockey catalogs (River City Sports, Frozen Pond and NHL) in the end table drawer in the living room. Desired items marked accordingly. Probably won’t buy anything in there, but just in case someone asks or my beautiful wife decides to surprise me with more junk I really don’t need, she won’t have to guess what I want the most.

Not sure if I saw this one in a catalog or not but Christmas ’92 my Aunt Julie got me a table hockey game (Franklin Table Hockey Model 7250). Oh this thing was amazing. The teams were yellow and black and red and white (I imagined them to be the NJ Devils and Boston Bruins) the coolest feature of all was a plastic scoreboard with dials for keeping track of goals. Shortly after Christmas eve presents were opened, I begged to get this thing out of the box and play with it. And we did. And then discovered a rod was bent or warped in the box and it would have to go back to the store. Crushed, but I had a new table hockey game shortly after Christmas. Poor Aunt Julie was still recovering from my birthday the previous year where she got me “Hot Shot Basketball” table top game. It wasn’t much of a game without the needed spring that attached to the bottom of the catapult used to shoot the basketballs. I must say, the VHS copy of 101 Dalmatians I also received worked just fine.

There aren’t many toys a grown man needs, but if Santa wants to know what to bring. I’d still tell him a table hockey game.