A Christmas to remember

Actually, I wish I could forget but it is etched deeply in my mind.

My twin sister and I had a cat that we were greatly attached to. His name was Charlie. He wasn't just any cat but a kindred spirit of sorts. There were a few problems with having Charlie. For one, I was allergic to him but my sister and I had this unspoken rule that I would never sneeze, sniff or itch when I was holding Charlie in front of my parents. Also, our grandmother lived with us and she hated cats. She had complained so often about Charlie being in the house that my parents had agreed that he should sleep outside in the garage. Little did they know that we snuck him in when no one was looking. One night, Grandmother was on her knees praying when Charlie ran into her room and said, "Meeeeooooowww"! Not only did he interrupt her prayers but she screamed for us to get "that nasty cat" out of her room. Needless to say, she complained so much that my mom decided that Charlie had to go.

Charlie was dumped off at a place close by to where my mom worked. Before he left, we cried and cried. We begged my mom not to take him. She must've known how hard it would be but yet, she still chose to take Charlie and dump him off to make things easier on our grandmother.

Grandmother's response was to promise that she'd buy us something else that would make us happy. We decided (after it took quite a few months to get over Charlie) that we wanted a pigmy goat. Christmas day was it. We just knew that we had a goat reserved with our name on it.

We could barely sleep from the excitement. We talked about names we'd call our goat. We talked about how little it would be and how much fun it would be to take care of it. Early the next morning, our big sister woke up and decided to peek at what Santa had brought. She came running back, whispering, "Twins, you're going to love it! I hope that you'll let me help take care of it." We knew it. Our goat was waiting for us. We were bursting with excitement.

Finally, when our parents were awake we feigned surprise and ran by all the gifts laid out by the tree. We looked around but there was no sign of our goat. First thought was that it was in the kitchen, waiting for the right moment. We opened all the gifts under the tree and finally, our mom said, "There's a special gift from your grandmother waiting for you in the kitchen."

There in the kitchen was....

A fish aquarium.

We were devastated. We were both very good little girls but when you have your mind and heart set on something and it turns out to be fish instead....

with tears running down both of our cheeks, we said, "Thank you, Grandmother."

Being clueless, Grandmother figured we were overcome with joy and she beamed. To this day, I doubt she realizes just how disappointed we were.

One of these days, I'm gonna buy my sister a pigmy goat for Christmas. I can see her face now. She'll laugh and laugh!