All I Want For Christmas...

My daughter's desire to have everything under the sun for Christmas, regardless of whether it's age or gender appropriate (seriously, honey, what would you do with that espresso machine?), made me think of the presents my former 6th grade students had bestowed upon me over my years at the elementary school.

You see, presents for teachers are divided up into categories.
1) The presents that will make the teacher next door jealous (gift certificates to your favorite restaurant or Starbucks would fall under this category. See's "nuts and chews" candy also falls under this category).
2) The useful presents as long as you don't get too many of them (coffee mugs, school supplies, cute teacher gifts, smelly lotiony stuff)
3) The stuff you put in the teacher's lounge because you are going to start that diet soon (candy other than See's nuts and chews, homemade cookies and breads, etc...)
4) The stuff you have to gulp when you see it and then smile and say, "Oh, THANK you. Wow. That's really something."

After my first year of teaching I learned that when it comes to getting their teacher Christmas gifts, kids have the mind of a steel trap and will remember anything you say and they watch you like a hawk. For instance, one year I made an off-handed remark about how I liked chocolate when I was stressed. That same year I made some sort of "oh, how cute" comment when some girl brought her Hello, Kitty pencil box to school. That Christmas, all I got was chocolate and Hello, Kitty items for Christmas. No, that's a lie, I also got a coffee mug filled with candy.

I decided to start experimenting. One year, around October, I started bringing a Starbucks to school every morning and saying things like, "Oh, I'm sorry, I just can't function until I have finished my coffee."

Sure enough that Christmas I received about 10 Starbucks cards. It was awesome.

I started wondering what else I could get if I really put effort into it. So then, I would say things like, "Oh, I can hardly WAIT to go to dinner at Islands tonight." "I saw the cutest blouse at Nordstrom Rack the other day." "I just can't get enough of this Starbucks coffee."

Some years it worked better than others, but about 7 years into teaching, I thought I had the system down and I was surfing the big wave of good teacher Christmas gifts.

Then...there was the year of the dolphin snow globe statue.

There I was, opening my See's candy, teacher mugs, gift cards, the like and then...the really heavy bag with lots and lots of tissue paper.

"My, this is heavy. Whatever could it be?"

As I dug my way through Christmas tissue paper, with the giver of the gift staring anxiously at me with a huge grin on her face, I unwrapped what had to be the biggest knick-knack disaster I have ever seen. It was a statue. It was a snow globe. It was a statue and a snow globe in these gloriously bright colors. It was a statue with a snow globe of gloriously bright colors surrounded by a dolphin in huge cresting waves about to break over it's head.

I think I said something like, "Holy Cow!"

I remember thanking the girl and setting the statue on my desk.

When the bell rang for lunch, I carried it, like a baby, into the Teacher's Lounge with me and set it on a table.

My friend, Karen, walked in the lounge loudly proclaiming the joys of Christmas break until she saw the dolphin thing.

"Wow. What's that?"

"A Christmas gift from a student."

And she laughed out loud.

Another teacher who came into the lounge said, "Hey, it's not so bad. One year I got a coupon for carpet cleaning as my present."

If you're wondering, I didn't keep the dolphin statue. But I did continue loving the student who gave it to me.

And I slowed down on the pimping for gift cards. Kids get their teachers what they want to. And it makes for better Teacher's Lounge stories that way.