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Best gift I ever got...Wow. That's a bit tricky.

I would say that when I was growing up, the best gift I got was my first-ever typewriter when I was 6: a real children's typewriter, a blue Buddy L manual that really typed, and had the return lever you pushed to advance to the next line and a little bell that dinged when you got to the end of the line you were on, and a package of typing paper to go with it. I spent hours pounding out stories and commercials and news reports with my index fingers on that thing. And then I got a Smith Corona electric typewriter for Christmas the Christmas I was 13, and I wrote so much that I had gone through an entire ribbon cartridge by New Year's Eve afternoon!

The other presents that really stand out are jewelry, because I'm not one much for jewelry, except for these two pieces, which I wear every single day unless I'm flat on my back sick in bed.

I had been pestering my parents for a grown-up watch since I was 7. I didn't want some dorky little Barbie watch (I never played with Barbies; I hated dolls, actually, much to the chagrin of my mother). I wanted a real grown-up's watch. And since I was fascinated with technology from an early age, I wanted a digital watch (they were all the rage in the '80s, you know). So the Christmas that I was 10, in 1987, I got my first grown-up watch: a Timex digital that also told the date. I wore that watch until the end of junior high four years later. I've never been without a watch since, although I have traded up to a regular clock face watch...but it's still a Timex, and it's one of those Indiglo watches, where you can push the knob and it will light up the watch face in green so you can see what time it is even if it's pitch black.

Since high school was the worst time of my life that didn't directly involve my grandma being sick and dying, I didn't want any of the reminders of it that most people usually get, most notably the yearbooks and the class ring. But my mom had gotten her birthstone ring as a gift from her paternal grandparents when she was 13, and she wore it until the band literally broke, which was well after I and all four of my siblings had been born. I had mentioned on and off from my sophomore year onward that I wouldn't be squeezing my parents for money for a class ring because I didn't want a permanent reminder of those years. My mom casually asked me once, when I was a junior, which was THE worst year of my high-school life, if I'd ever consider a birthstone ring, and I said, "Actually, yeah, I'd really like a birthstone ring." She filed that information away and kept it, and 14 years ago today, when I was 17, in the midst of all the hustle and bustle of getting ready for Christmas Eve, she pulled me into the bathroom--the one room where you were guaranteed privacy at our old house--and handed me a small, square gray box. It wasn't wrapped or anything. I had no idea what it could be, having forgotten about the ring for the time being. I opened the box, and poured out the gray velvet ring box in my hand. I opened it, and there was an amethyst stone in a simple, plain gold setting winking up at me. I had to have it resized because it turns out I have freakishly small fingers (my ring size is 4 1/2, at least on my right hand; a birthstone ring is, to me, a right-hand ring, because wedding and engagement rings go on the left hand, and I'm not there yet), but I wear that ring every day of my life, and I think that probably is the most meaningful, sentimental Christmas present I've ever gotten. If I ever have a daughter of my own, well, hopefully her high school years will be better than mine, but I plan to start a tradition by also giving her her birthstone ring on Christmas Eve when she's 17.

Amy
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