Yesterday I did this icebreaker thing. You know, one of those games where you have to answer a question about time travel or philosophy, or basically any question that doesn’t pertain to what you’re doing?
The question was about the best gift you ever received.
This wasn’t a Christmas gift, but one year, when we were little kids, my brother got me something.
We were little. Like tiny, little. My birthday was at Showbiz Pizza, which was what Chuck E. Cheese used to be, if that gives you an idea. I got a Ghostbuster Ecto-1, and a Ghostbuster Ecto-2, which was a Ghostbuster helicopter/airplane that made no sense but had a sweet retractable hook. And I got a gift from my brother.
It was a sheet of paper. Lined notebook paper with things glued to it. An uninflated water balloon. A Showbiz Pizza ticket. And a sort of small, paper wing.
It was a bunch of stuff on a paper.
My first thought had something to do with being a little mad. Here we are at Showbiz Pizza, and I have an extra ticket, but it’s glued down to this piece of paper.
But after a little while, the decades it took to cool down, that gift kind of blew my mind.
Before that, it never really occurred to me to get someone else a gift. And here my brother got me this thing. Or made it. It’s not like we had any cash to go get things for ourselves. But the little stuff he had, he put it together. For me.
That’s not the best gift I ever got, though. It’s not the best gift my brother ever got me either.
The best gift he ever got me was broken. A tall, brown coffee cup he bought me at a thrift store. When he gave it to me, it was wrapped, and the broken off handle was resting inside. Without the handle attached, I didn’t know it was a coffee cup. He had to explain it to me.
That wasn’t the easiest year for my brother. He just got back from the Peace Corps. He was living at home. He worked, but not enough, and not doing something he liked, and not for a lot of money.
It wasn’t the easiest year. And he got me something. He broke it right before he wrapped it. He couldn’t fix it or get something else. He just had to go with it.
I still have it. I have it out, in my home. It’s full of pencils and pens, but it’s here, and I see it every day.
There are a lot of different reasons it’s my favorite gift. I guess I could say it’s because of the thought, or because I identified with those tough years. It could be because I didn’t need much of anything anyway, so getting something from him, anything, was really the beginning and the end of it.
But I don’t think I want to figure that out right now. Why exactly it meant so much to me and means so much to me. It broke my heart. And it was wonderful.