The Christmas of my tenth year, our family lived in a little house in LaVerkin, Utah. We weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich either. Like Ralphie, I wanted a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun more than anything else in the world. When Christmas morning came, there it was, under the tree! I was ecstatic. I didn’t think about the sacrifices my parents must have made to give it to me, and graciously, my parents didn’t remind me. No one even told me that I would shoot my eye out. Dad showed me how to load it. He cocked it, pulled the trigger, and hit mom’s living room table leg. She was NOT happy. I can still see my dad’s sheepish grin, and I remember how quickly mom forgave him.
