It was a Saturday morning just before Christmas when my father, who was born in 1909, asked me to take him to a dime store to pick up gifts for his younger grandchildren. We went to a big box variety store and he headed to the Toy Department. He talked about the games he and his brothers and friends played that involved a small rubber ball. He said the rubber balls he was talking about were a nickel each and he could get a bag full of nickel balls to give to his grandchildren and to hand out to any child he saw until the bag was empty. He said every child should have a rubber ball.
The Toy Department was stocked with every kind of wind-up toy, beautiful dolls that walked and talked, balls of all colors and sizes, toy trucks and tractors. Jingle Bells and White Christmas were the background music. The decorations and Christmas trees with blinking lights, people shopping and children laughing made the whole store a paradise for those of us who love the season. He walked around the toy department loving the whole Christmas feeling as he looked for those nickel balls.
He kept picking up balls and putting them back. I suggested that the small rubber balls looked like what he wanted. He said, “No, the balls I am looking are the nickel balls. These balls are $1.99 each”. After accepting the fact that nickel balls were no longer a nickel, he did buy some balls but not as many as he had planned. As we drove home with him holding onto his purchase, he removed one ball from his bag and felt it, rolled it around in his hands and said, “They are charging $1.99 for this ball but IT IS A NICKEL BALL”.
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