The toy I didnt get for Christmas

Now that I’m shopping for Christmas again, I’m becoming nostalgic, remembering the toys of Christmas past.
Like most modern consumer kids, I have a long list of cherished toys I didn’t get. Oh, the agony of opening that gift under the tree and not finding that special toy I wanted.
This is what happened with a Cabbage Patch Doll:
Everyone I knew had at least four or five of them. Some lucky girls even had, like, twenty. These dolls were like hockey cards for girls. Everyone had to have them, the more the better.
But not me (sigh). Not even one. So I wrote it at the very top of my wish list in BIG BOLD LETTERS. I left “hints” for Santa in the form of cut out pictures from catalogues, and posted them on the refrigerator or accidently left them on the table.
Finally, on Christmas morning I saw a nicely wrapped gift that looked cabbage-patch doll sized!
But when I tore through the wrapping, my heart sank into my chest when I realized I was not opening a box sent from the cabbage patch at all. I put on a polite smile and thanked my grandma, even as I was overcome with oceans of agony and grief. Grandma had made me a large doll on her sewing machine, with brown wool hair and eyes like mine; adorned in a pretty, blue dress.
After politely opening my other gifts, I rushed downstairs to the playroom and cried, throwing the useless not-cabbage-doll on the floor…
A few days later, the doll was still laying there.
I picked her up just to put her away, but then I forgot I hated this doll and started playing with her. I decided she needed a name, just like real cabbage dolls get. I made a fancy name tag for her, and called her Shelley Marina. I changed her clothes, styled her hair, and posed her prettily on my pillow. And we became inseparable playmates.

Eventually I did get the cabbage patch doll. But it was never as important as the unique, hand-made, brown-haired heirloom my own grandma had made just for me.