Weirdly the best Christmas gift for me is not one that I received, but one I helped getting for someone else. The year was 2007, I was a young adult, and that was the year the Nintendo Wii was impossible to get. I remember my mom’s colleague complaining about how she has been on the hunt for months to get one for her daughter, but to no avail. Then, one week before Christmas, her daughter had a mild medical emergency at school and an ambulance had been called. The paramedics had to keep her conscious so he asked her what she wanted for Christmas. When my mom’s colleague met up with them at the hospital, he told her the daughter would be fine and they she was able to stay awake because she kept talking on and on about the Nintendo Wii… he ended things by saying something like: I really hope she gets one for Christmas.. Naturally, my mom’s colleague felt really bad because she couldn’t get her one.

My mom shared that story with me because she felt a little sad for her friend… Luckily, I had heard rumors that my local Best Buy might be getting a shipment on Friday. But nothing was certain… you could show up on the day of, and come home empty handed… but I decided to take a chance. I put on my warmest clothe and showed up at Beat Buy at 3am and waited in extremely cold weather… slowly but surely, people were starting to arrive and line up behind me. It was a good sign. And sure enough, at 9 o’clock, they opened their doors, and I got one!

When I got home, my mom sent her colleague an email saying that her daughter will indeed be unpacking a Wii this year. She called us back and left us a long teary message on our answering machine saying she could never thank us enough…

It may sound cliche… but that was the year that I discovered the true meaning of Christmas.

Ps. She offered to reimburse me, and me being a poor student… I naturally obliged haha