My Walkie-Talkie Christmas

(Originally published on December 15, 2013)

In my youth the anticipation of Christmastime and Christmas itself was exciting. So, the aftermath of the holiday and returning to school was—it makes sense—extremely depressing. Seeing decorations and lights lingering in people’s windows—while knowing that Christmas was not on the horizon but a memorable fait accompli—was an awful feeling. But it was a microcosm of life, I have since learned. All good things end, attached—quite often—to an ugly payback of some sort.

Anyway, in January 1973, upon my melancholic return to St. John’s grammar school in the Bronx’s Kingsbridge neighborhood, religion teacher Sister Therese queried each of her students to name his or her favorite Christmas 1972 present. Except for the fact that my answer was “walkie-talkies,” I might not have remembered this banal Q&A. For Sister Therese repeated my words in a befuddled tone. It was as if she was unfamiliar with them. “Walkeee…talkeees,” she said or asked with a question mark.

It was a simpler time when one wanted walkie-talkies for Christmas. A neighbor of mine had a pair and we established contact times, where he would initiate a Morse code—something that his more advanced walkie-talkies were equipped with but not, sadly, mine. I recall my mother talking with his mother on the walkie-talkies as if it were big thing—a grand technological moment akin to the very first phone call. Of course, they could have called one another on the telephone—and gotten better reception—or walked down a flight of stairs and met one another on our adjoining front stoops.

My “walkie-talkie” Christmas—1972—assumes an even a higher importance to me because they were number one on my “Santa Claus” list that year. I was certain that ol’ Saint Nick would come through with them, but he disappointed me big time. But forty years ago, I had a very generous godmother who always bought me a Christmas gift—a real one, something that I coveted, and not clothing—but I did not typically see her to New Year’s Eve. Albeit a week later than expected, my godmother came through with the walkie-talkies. Santa Claus had arranged it with her. The pair of walkie-talkies were trimmed in cool-looking 1970s blue and individually packed in form-fitting Styrofoam compartments—worth the wait and then some! They had that wondrous transistor-radio plastic smell, too—something a 1970s kid appreciated. Suffice it to say, walkie-talkie fun ensued.

For sure, there will be no commensurate walkie-talkie gift this Christmas. It is just not in the Yuletide cards anymore. There will be no Morse code chatter with a neighbor, either. Such is life as time marches on and on and on.