It was Christmas time again in the Burton household.  All five boys, ages 2 through 11, were running, stomping, cheering, singing, and making enough noise to match a three-ring circus.  Mom and Dad had painstakingly gone to great lengths to maintain their childhood belief in the jolly, bearded man who comes but once a year, and they had told the boys that yes, each of them had been very good this year, and yes, Santa had brought presents for all of them. 

It was Christmas morning and Mom and Dad were exhausted.  John had been up until 2am installing a swing set, a race track, and a castle.  Once again, they had overspent.  But they didn’t care.  The family business was doing very well, and this next year they hoped to expand by adding two new stores.  So when the Christmas lists rolled out once again, both Mom and Dad just looked at each other and shrugged a why-not to each other.  At least they were asking for electronics.  Thankfully, Andrew, the oldest, didn’t have friends who were getting ipods or cell phones.  And he already had an Xbox (but to their surprise, he didn’t ask for any games). 

Dad didn’t ask for anything, which is what he did every year.  This always left Janice puzzled because she felt that he was very hard to shop for.  Should she buy him some tools?  Books?  Clothes?  No, not clothes.  He hated getting clothes for Christmas.  It was something that carried over from his childhood–he was never excited to open a gift that had jeans or a shirt or underwear in it.  This year, she went out on a limb and bought him a lock-picking set.  She thought it might come in handy because they rented out a number of apartments, and sometimes their tennants lost their keys.  The apartments didn’t have a uniform set of locks, so they had to carry around a keyring with dozens of oddly labeled keys.  About two years back, they had lost the master keyring and had a terrible time looking for it.  (They eventually found it underneath the passenger seat of his truck). 

Janice figured that John might also appreciate the lock picking kit because he enjoyed puzzles.  He enjoyed the challenge of taking things apart, figuring out how mechanical things work, putting things back together again. 

But like every Christmas that came and went, neither Janice nor John really cared what they got.  They stopped worrying about that years and years ago, as most adults do.