Merry Christmas – time to "makeup"

With children and teenagers running around with cellphones, Blackberrys and iPhones, it's a wonder they haven't learned to take over the world yet. Because, as we all know, children are smarter and more ingenious than adults - and it's proved year after year after year when it comes to the hiding/finding of Christmas presents.
Adults - me included - are twits when it comes to hiding things. All of our presents for the children have been stuffed in our closet for the past six weeks - partially out of busyness and partially out of laziness. My two-year-old son or teenaged stepchildren could have walked in, taken a survey of their treasures and known all before Christmas Day. But you have to hope that by the late teen years, some of the snooping stops. And my toddler? Well, he likes the Christmas wrapping cardboard tubes best anyway.
Sometimes though, present snooping will get you. It got me one year, back in the '90s.
My parents tried many hiding places. One year, in the late 1980s, they hid my She-Ra: Princess of Power doll (she was the sister of He-Man from Masters of the Universe, very 80s) under their bed. For a month, I'd get her out of the Zellers bag and play with her, pretending to stroke her golden hair through the protective plastic. That same year, they bought me one of those white charity teddy bears The Bay always used to sell - they had little red scarves. I played with him, too in the days leading up to Christmas because my parents hid him under their bed with She-Ra.
Love you mom and dad, but duh.
After that incident - because I confessed on Christmas I'd been playing with them forever - my parents started taking our presents to relatives' houses but that became a pain when you wanted to wrap them, or check them out to see what kind of batteries they took, so the gifts returned to our house. One year, when it was time to start snooping, I had a vision. I just instantly knew where everything was, so I went to the keys in our front hall and grabbed the one for the Volkswagon Jetta, an old car that was rusted to the ground in our garage that dad was always supposed to be doing something with, according to my mother. I popped the trunk open and there they were - the motherload. (If this was a TV show, a church choir dressed in burgundy robes would have popped out of the back seat and started to sing Hallelujah!)
And there, in the trunk, was a gift I hadn't asked for but one that was really creative and cool and useful, unlike so many other presents that parents buy teenagers.
My parents had bought me a professional-style makeup mirror, one with lights so that you could change the colour and brightness of the lights to office, or evening or daytime so that your makeup would be suited to your environment. I loved it. I was excited. I had great parents.
On Christmas morning, I opened gift after gift after gift, waiting for my makeup mirror. I got junky jewelry and bad turtlenecks and a nice hair brush set from my brother. I didn't mind these gifts because I knew the mirror was coming. But as the morning went on, there was no mirror. And then, Christmas seemed to be over. But I thought my parents were just tricking me.
"Christmas is done. Did you have a good one?" my mother asked.
I sat there looking smug, knowing they were going to pull out one last gift for my brother and me.
And then, so predictable, my dad reached behind his chair and pulled out another gift - it was the makeup mirror. I knew the shape of the box.
"Here you go," my dad said ...
... and he handed the box to my mother.

Crosbiemania wishes everyone a very merry Christmas and reminds everyone that snoopers never prosper.