During our early youth, our father established a wonderful but somewhat painful Christmas tradition.
To understand the total impact this game had, you must understand that our father had many outstanding qualities. But the most important one was Integrity.
I can't remember him ever breaking a promise. So you can imagine our excitement when he announced it was time for us to make a list of the presents we desired. He even supplied the paper (lots of it, by the way) and the pencils. With total sincerity, he said, "Whatever you want, boys. Don't hold back." And we knew he meant it. Like I said earlier, we had learned that his word was as good as gold.
So with great enthusiasm we began this most exciting and pleasurable task. Among many other things, each list contained a pony, a high-powered rifle and so on.
Now, there was one catch... there was the "contract."
The contract was the understanding that any acts of mischief, broken furniture and/or windows, undone chores, grades below a "B" or ignored curfews would cause one request to be removed from the list.
Oh, and we made out the list on the first day of September.
By the September 3rd ...Continue
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