By Chris Cole
Special to NKyTribune
Christmas feels different this year. The songs are on the radio, the presents are under the tree and we’ll be spending the big day with family like always, but after the struggle that has been 2020, there’s just something missing.
It’s certainly not nostalgia. I find myself daily harking back to happier seasons with healthy family and friends, cookie plates shared at the office without fear of catching something, and long days spent searching for the perfect gifts in store after store.
In fairness, things aren’t all bad this year. As an introvert, long holidays spent with family and friends are exhausting, no matter how much I love my people; cookie plates in the office every day are really the last thing I need right now; and even after long days of shopping, I rarely end up with the perfect gift.
In fact, I would consider myself a subpar gift giver. Or at least an inconsistent one. One year, you might get an instrument signed by your favorite band and the next, you might not get anything at all. It’s not that I don’t care – in fact, it’s the opposite. I want my gifts to be perfect. Life-changing even. But I get stuck and convince myself that whatever I get will be wrong.
I know that’s an impossible standard. Every gift can’t be life-changing. But as we celebrate this strange Christmas, I think back to three gifts I have received in my life that were indeed life-changing for three very different reasons.
The first was a Matchbox car. The year was 1982 and I was so excited for a gift exchange at Mildred Dean Elementary. I was in first grade, and I had picked out the perfect gift – a poster for the top movie in America, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. E.T. was the first movie I had ever seen in a theater, and I remember carrying the wrapped poster to class knowing that I’d gotten someone the perfect gift.
And then I opened my Matchbox car. It was a perfectly fine gift, one that boys have been giving and receiving for decades with joy and satisfaction. But for a 6-year-old Weren’t No Boy Scout, it lacked the cool factor of an E.T. poster.
And I’m embarrassed to admit that I let my disappointment show. Frankly, I was a spoiled little punk who made a fool of himself right there in the classroom. I may have even cried.
I don’t think I immediately understood how poorly I acted that day, but I’ve never been unappreciative for a single gift I’ve received since. I don’t remember who gifted me the Matchbox, but if you happen to be reading this, I am truly sorry.
The second gift that changed my life was also a car, but this time it wasn’t a toy. I was a sophomore at Northern Kentucky University and my manure brown Buick Skylark had fallen apart on my way to school. The frame had rusted and the car literally collapsed to the ground as I was driving it.
There was no saving it, and we lived in Grants Lick at the time, so I had no way to get back and forth to NKU. Devastated, I decided to drop out of school.
My stepfather Karl wouldn’t hear of it. He hopped in his Mercury Cougar and, with a friend following behind him, made the long drive from Beckley, W. Va., to Northern Kentucky. He got out, gave me the keys and a few pointers on how to operate the Cougar, and then climbed into his friend’s car and headed back to Beckley.
Karl taught me the importance of education that day. He would rather drive nine hours roundtrip and give away his own car than let me drop out of school. I like to think that I repaid him by staying in school, graduating and having a productive career in public relations.
Not long after graduating, I received another gift that had a far greater impact than intended. The year was 1999 and I was living in Colorado Springs. I was fresh out of college and living on my own for the first time. I couldn’t afford to fly home for the holidays, so I’d decided to volunteer at a local soup kitchen on Christmas.
Truth is, there was a thin line separating me from those I served that day. After I paid my rent and essential bills, I just didn’t have enough to live on. I got paid monthly, and usually by the last week of the month I was running on fumes. Add in the inevitable expenses of Christmas and I was tapped halfway through the month. In fact, on Christmas Eve I had resorted to going into the office and eating all the extra packs of crackers that had gone uneaten during lunches as my dinner.
With no paycheck coming until January, I had no idea how I was going to survive. The next day, I received a Christmas card in the mail from my dad. The message was simple: “If you can’t come home for Christmas, at least call us and say hello.”
Tucked inside was a twenty dollar bill. I remember standing there feeling more grateful than I had ever felt in my entire life. I’d make it through the New Year after all.
I don’t know if I ever told my dad how much that twenty bucks meant to me, but I think about it every single Christmas. It taught me that even the smallest “good turn” can change somebody’s life.
Merry Christmas from the Man Scout. Do a Good Turn Daily!
Chris Cole is Director of Enterprise Communications at Sanitation District No. 1 and a deacon at Plum Creek Christian Church in Butler. He lives in Highland Heights with his wife, Megan. The Man Scout chronicles Cole’s journey to acquiring some of the skills of the head, the heart and the hand he failed to learn as a child of the 1980s growing up in Newport. His field guide: a 1952 Boy Scouts Handbook he found on eBay.