You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas by Augusten Burroughs Read Free Book Online

coins (quarters and above)
OR
Real gold nuggets (5–6)
AND

Real leather wallet (filled with assortment of bills)
Variety of candy (chocolate,
NO fruit-based candies
)
Red candy canes, not green NO MINT OR
WINTERGREEN ANYTHING
AND

Level B surprise gift—Mother-selected
Assortment of level C gifts—Mother-selected
     
    A second sheet of paper was provided featuring a list of lower-priced B items, such as sterling-silver neck chains, mood rings, Silly Putty, and finally a C list of gums, Jawbreakers, and other under-a-dollar items, most of which could cause cavities or stain fabric. I had to specify
mother-selected
because if my father chose the gifts, they would be grossly inappropriate for the era.
    Last year, my stocking was filled with brittle cellophane-wrapped packages of Lance Toastchee peanut butter and cheese crackers. Then into the toe of the stocking my father had crammed a useless nickel with a lumpy cow on the back.
    Worst of all, he’d included three unsharpened pencils.
    “
Well,
these are the presents I used to receive in my stocking when I was your age,” he said. And he didn’t look mad about it, either. He looked all happy and dippy, like he always did when he remembered his own kid things.
    “Jack and Carolyn gave you a bunch of junky crackers and that’s it?” I asked, astonished.
    “
Junky?
These were brand new back then. Why, nobody had ever seen anything like them! Crackers with real cheese and peanut butter inside? It was amazing. Like a sandwich you could carry around in your pocket. I took a package with me to my classroom and showed the other kids and boy oh boy, were they envious.”
    I looked at the fifteen or twenty packs of crackers I’d dumped out on the carpet. Our dog, Cream, had come over and sniffed them and she had walked away. “Well, then you can have these, too,” I said, sliding the mound of them toward his rocking chair. And without comment, I slid the pencils toward him, too.
    “You don’t want your pencils?” he said, stunned, like I was handing him back a crisp fifty. “Those are
number-one
lead pencils. We used to fight over those in school.”
    “Yeah, so do the kids at my school. Only they fight
with
them. Eric got stabbed in the eardrum. That’s why we have to use those Flair felt tips now.”
    He considered this.
    “And the nickel? That was your big present?” I asked sourly, pinching the dirty coin between my thumb and index finger like I would a dead roach.
    “Son, that’s not just a nickel. It’s an Indian Head nickel. You don’t see too many of these anymore. Did you turn it over?” he asked, reaching from his chair.
    I turned it over and shrugged. Then I crawled across the carpet, too lazy to stand, and handed it to him.
    He chuckled as he inspected the coin. “Yes, yes, there it is. See? The buffalo on the other side. A great big old buffalo, how about that?”
    “I thought it was just a cow,” I said, bored. “I get those animal nickels in change sometimes. I always throw them in the trash because I thought they were counterfeit.”
    My father nearly swallowed his tongue. “You th-th-threw away your Indian Head nickels?”
    “Well, yeah. How was I supposed to know they were real? The only animal allowed on regular American money is that bird. We don’t put farm animals on the money anymore.”
    My father said, “Well, I cannot imagine. When I was your age, we used to beg my mother for her change purse so we could hunt for Indian Heads. If I had been given one in change? Why, that would have been the happiest day of my life.”
    He looked truly bewildered, lost in time. It was like I had informed him, “Yes, and not only do the horses now have
engines
strapped to their stomachs? But their legs have been chopped off and replaced with wheels!”
    So this year, I wanted to make sure I didn’t wake up on Christmas morning and find another stocking filled with more junk from his childhood—nails, paper clips, rocks. It amazed me that he