I don’t remember the year but it doesn’t really matter anyway. Our twins were in middle school or grammar school as it was called in my day.

Melinda had been showing an interest in art and in music. I was in Paul Bowman’s 5 and 10 one day and I spotted this nice looking guitar. I was trying to buy more this Christmas than the usual socks and underwear for our kids.

I enquired of Paul what the price of the guitar was and he told me and I believe it was around 100.00 or maybe a little more.

I didn’t have that kind of money to spend so I walked away and left it there. I was telling my coworkers about the guitar and someone mentioned to me that Paul would let you make payments on the musical instruments. A few days later I went in and got that guitar for Melinda on payments and snuck it home and wrapped it and hid it in the garage.

In the weeks to follow I put our tree up and decorated our house for Christmas. I began to pull gifts out of hiding places and wrap them and put them under our tree. I always used name tags so each child knew ahead of time what was under the tree for them. In retrospect, naming the gifts was probably not the smartest thing to do.

Danny accidentally knocked the tree over one year with his bottom as he was in behind it trying to count his number of presents.

Melinda is normally a pretty upbeat person but this one particular Christmas her countenance slowly began to change….. everyone had gifts under the tree but her. The guitar was such an odd shape that even though I had wrapped it there was no way that she would not guess it and that was the only present she had as I was going to have to make payments for a year on it plus I tried to always spend the same amount of money on each kid and that one gift was her limit for that year.

As Christmas rapidly approached, Melinda smiled less and less and I probably didnt really notice as my life was so hectic back then.

One day Rachel came to me in private and asked why Melinda had no presents under the tree. I explained to her the why of it and she explained to me how sad Melinda had been. I think those kids were counting presents under that tree every time my back was turned.

Rachel went her merry way and immediately ran to Melinda and told her everything that I had said. That was back in the days before I realized that there are no secrets between twins and if you tell one in private you might as well tell them both at the same time so the story stays straight and it doesn’t get garbled up in the translation from one twin to the other.

Melinda was fine as soon as the cat was let out of the bag and when she opened her guitar that year she acted like she was surprised even though she had known for weeks.

Mark and I never exchanged gifts back in those years because it was all we could do to pay for the gifts for the kids.

i am really thankful for store owners like Paul Bowman and his 5 and dime where you could buy on credit sometimes.

Melinda still has that original guitar and says she will never sell it because she cherishes the fact that I made payments on it for a whole year at the 5 and dime.