Richmond Review Nov. 1997. BC Parent December 2000
Remember the Elmo
I watched the Elmo raze of the Christmas of ‘96 with a certain smug fascination. My children, long past the toy wishing age, had asked for things ‘sporty’ from the big guy. Gone were the days when I had to push my way through the throng of fad-crazed shoppers to purchase the toy of the year. But even in my smugness I felt a twinge of desperation for the parents who would not be able to find the Elmo that their child desperately wanted. I had walked in those shoes once myself.
The year was 1984, my eldest daughter was five years old and had asked the guy in the red suit for none other than the impossible-to-find Cabbage Patch Kid. I could feel my heart sinking as she told me what she had whispered in the ear of the bearded elf. “He said if I was good, he’d bring one,” she said with stars in her eyes. She was always good… I was sunk. Suddenly I found myself on the telephone calling every toy department the in the area. Someone, somewhere had to have a Cabbage Patch Kid tucked away some place. My frenzied search became the stuff of which legends are made. I was rescued eventually by an unlikely hero, the sister-in-law of a friend of mine had purchased a ‘Kid’ and tucked it away on the off-chance her sports minded daughter might ask for one at Christmas. Fortunately for me, her daughter’s interest never enter the Cabbage Patch, and the doll was up for grabs. She sold it to me for the sticker price and unwittingly won a special place in my heart forever.
As I watched the ticket price for an Elmo catapult to almost a thousand dollars in the Classified section of the newspaper, I wondered how much I might have paid for a Cabbage Patch Kid had I not been rescued by an unselfish hero. Opportunity seldom knocks louder than the pounding of a parent’s heart when faced with the prospect of not being able to deliver what is so innocently wished for. The spirit of Christmas takes many shapes. I can say with certainty that Santa Claus exists, in 1984 he appeared to me in the form of an intuitive shopper, one without an opportunistic streak.
Once again parents are dubiously eyeing the shelves in toy departments and wondering when the next ‘dark horse’ will appear; the Elmo fiasco is an ever-present potential. Senses alert; ears perked; parents poise themselves, ready to pounce on the next craze. And we question the existence of Santa?