In December of 1983, Mrs. Leatherwood organized a Christmastime “fantasy gift exchange.” It worked like most other gift exchanges do — everybody in class randomly picked the name of a fellow student and we were to give them a gift. The difference was, as this was a “fantasy” gift exchange, instead of buying the gifts we got to draw them on paper instead. The only limit to our gifts was our imagination.<\/p>\n

I can’t remember exactly who drew my name, but I specifically remember whose name I pulled: “Cammie Bruce”. In 1983 I was 1 of 3 fifth graders in the Shedeck Gifted Program; the other ten or so kids were older sixth graders. Now I didn’t know much about Cammie Bruce or what sixth graders liked and I knew even less about what sixth grade girls liked, but I knew they liked make up and doing their hair and stuff like that, so based on that I went to work on my drawing.<\/p>\n

The following day, we exchanged our virtual gifts. Whoever drew my name hit the nail on the head. Inside my fantasy gift was two tickets for a ride on the Space Shuttle. I remember a big elaborate drawing of the solar system with the Space Shuttle zooming by and two tickets drawn down in the corner. <\/p>\n

We worked our way around the room and soon it was time for Cammie to open her fantasy gift. Inside her card, I had drawn an entire beauty salon. Inside I’d drawn the hairdrying chairs, the sinks, and all the beauty products and accessories I could think of. It took a long time to draw all those little combs, hair dryers and ribbons, and I was pretty pleased with my artistic skills. I think I even drew a couple of dresses on there as well. What can I say; I’m a giver.<\/p>\n

So just like a real gift exchange, we had to hold our pictures up and tell the class what we had got. Man I was proud of myself — I knew all the other girls in class would be so jealous!<\/p>\n

So we’re going around the room and we get to Cammie and she half-heartedly holds up her picture and then just starts bawling. I mean, sobbing. She dropped her head and buried it in her arms. All the other girls ran to her side to console her and started rubbing her back. All I remember was Cammie lifting her head long enough to choke out the words, “He thinks I’m UGLY!”<\/p>\n

The room was instantly divided that day. On one side sat a bunch of pissed off girls; on the other, a huddle of confused and scared little boys. I still remember the feeling of the smile melting from my face and wondering, what the hell just happened?<\/p>\n

At some point in every man’s life he eventually learns that women are different and that he will never fully understand them — the best you can do is try and fake it. I learned that lesson that day. I still don’t understand women and I’m still doing my best to fake it.<\/p>\n

Cammie, if you’re out there, let me know and I’ll draw you something else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In December of 1983, Mrs. Leatherwood organized a Christmastime “fantasy gift exchange.” It worked like most other gift exchanges do — everybody in class randomly picked the name of a fellow student and we were to give them a gift. The difference was, as this was a “fantasy” gift exchange, instead of buying the gifts we got to draw them on paper instead. The only limit to our gifts was our imagination. I can’t remember exactly who drew my name, but I specifically remember whose name I pulled: “Cammie Bruce”. In 1983 I was 1 of 3 fifth graders in… (read more)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robohara.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}