A Christmas Present

This is not the conversation I expected to have about Christmas. As a matter of fact, in my wildest dreams I never could have imagined this request or how hard it is to fill it... what a wish fulfilling failure I've turned out to be...

Me: What do you want for Christmas?
Kid: I don't really need anything.
Me: True, but there has to be something.
Kid: I need mittens.
Me: DONE!

Until, I can't find mittens. Why didn't I know this in July when I was cruising art and craft fairs? Why don't I have a neighbor that knits? Why don't I know anyone that knits? Come to think of it, I'd be happy to learn if it's possible to drink martinis and knit. So, who wants a scarf next year for Christmas, knitted by a drunken knitter? That's a sales pitch if I've ever heard one.

In desperation, I called my in-laws. Help me, I said. The kid wants mittens. You're old, you have to have an old friend that knits. I can't let a kid down on Christmas for lack of mittens! This is almost Little Timmy Cratchett awful. The kid has everything. No, he has two or three of everything known to man and all he wants are mittens! He'll freeze his digits waiting for the bus in January without a fuzzy pair of hand knit mittens.

Christmas 2009 is now the holiday that may go down in the book as the Christmas where all the kid wanted was a pair of knit mittens and his lousy, too busy mother can't figure that out. I can feed him sushi and take him to see a Jasper James exhibit, but I can't rouse up one pair of mittens! I'm a failure!

And, now, it's worse. The other kid wants them too. Two pairs of mittens. I've got 9 days.