an unexpected christmas

   I traveled back to my before-college home a couple times in August to visit my family, and during one of my visits we pulled an old memory out that I just had to write about.

   My little sister, and only sibling, went through a phase about five years back in which she really, really wanted a doll house. Not a Barbie Dreamhouse, but an actual wooden dollhouse with wooden dolls and wooden furniture. I thought that was really lame, to say the least, and asked Santa for a 2006 AmericanGirl stone-age-looking equivilant to today's touchscreen devices. So cool.

   Christmas Eve, my parents were setting up all the gifts that Santa had brought my sister and I when they made a discovery that will forever make me laugh.

   They had looked high and low on the internet to find the perfect wooden dollhouse and family. They ordered everything, getting excited about my sister's expected reaction to her dream present, and the package showed up shortly after at our little home. They didn't even bother to check inside the box, trusting that everything would be just how they had ordered.

   Well, the night before the big day, my mom was unwrapping all the parts and pieces when she gasped.

    "Uh, honey?" - my alarmed mother

    "Hmm?" - dad

    "This family is black."

    "Black?"

    "Yeah. And there's no dad. We got a black family with no dad."

   Inside of the bubble wrap sat a mother, two children, and an infant.

   I don’t in any way intend this post to sound racist. But seriously, a black family with no dad? How much more stereotypical could you get? I can just imagine the person whose job it is to wrap up mass manufactured little wooden families looking at my parents’ order form and thinking “Another perfect little white family, eh? Suck on this!”.

   My parents couldn’t exactly give my sister a dollhouse without any dolls, and not many stores in our little town stay open until the crack of dawn on Christmas Day, (or stay open the week of Christmas, period), so they had only one choice: act normal.

   The next morning, my sister was completely elated after seeing her new house and its inhabitants. She didn’t mention their color at all! It was actually really cool; look how far we’ve progressed, America! When my mom asked where the daddy was, she simply replied “the war”.

   I didn’t get the pleasure of hearing this story until a couple years ago, and it’s by far one of the funniest tales I’ve heard. Lesson learned: check to make sure the dolls you ordered are what you ordered. Or, better yet, raise your kids to not care! Acceptance is essential.