I was 12 years old, it was 1978, beginning of November, a Saturday morning. I know it was a Saturday morning because that’s when the cartoons came on, and I was probably watching Bugs Bunny when the commercial played for the first time.
TCR Total Control Racing was a slot racing set with little cars on an electrified track with voltage controlled by plastic trigger devices, except this one had NO SLOT to keep the cars on the track, instead it used a switch on the trigger to shift the electric feed from one set of contacts underneath the car to a second that powered an alternate driveshaft…
…meaning the cars could CHANGE LANES. Whenever you wanted. Pass each other on the turns then fire into the straightaways. The set included a jam car that just slowly went around the track as an additional obstacle. The whole thing was an absolute miracle of engineering and design, and here it was…just seven weeks until Christmas.
There had never been one Christmas morning where I’d stood, pajama-clad and be-slippered, facing a holiday hearth with the slightest anticipation of a lump of raw petroleum as a gift. I had never been naughty, and you have to be naughty to get coal in your stocking, very naughty according to all the songs and relevant literature. Sporting a childhood demeanor more Pollyanna than Katzenjammer, I was a more than decade-long honoree of The Nice List.
But household standards were more stringent than traditional North Pole rules; not being naughty was in no way the same as being nice, and nice on it’s own wasn’t nearly enough, too low a bar, as evidenced by the fact that the phrase “that’s nice.” has never really indicated high praise. What I was supposed to be, in a general sense, was a good person.
Good was also canon, per “…he knows if you’ve been bad or good…”, and was considered more weighty than the traditional naughty/nice gambit. Good and bad indicated commitment to a specific behavioral path, not just dabbling in decency or mischief. As we grow older, the opposite of good evolves to evil, but that’s way beyond what we can handle at Christmas. Surely an evil kid wouldn’t even get coal; their stocking would be missing altogether as if The Grinch had dropped by.
It didn’t matter how good I was, I wasn’t getting the TCR because we couldn’t afford it. But as a treat, my mom drove to the really nice toy store way across town at 95th street, in the nice neighborhood where they had it assembled and on interactive display so kids could play with it.
It was important to my mother to let me know that I had been good that year, and that it was appreciated by her, and if we had the money she would have definitely gotten it. (If it had been in any way available, I might have asked Santa for it, but the set had instantly sold out nationwide.)
On Christmas Eve, my mother got a check in the mail, a miracle check of some kind, entirely unexpected. She stood kind of frozen in the middle of the living room, backlit with afternoon sun and the lights of our Christmas tree, and just stared at it for a long time, not saying anything, then looked at me.
“Let’s go get your racetrack.”
“It’s sold out, Mama.” I reminded her.
“Call around and see.”
“I don't need it, Mama.” I told her, and I didn’t. KPRS was on the radio playing soul holiday hits and we were gonna make a gingerbread house. Christmas was on.
“See if you can find it.” she insisted.
So, outside, while gentle late afternoon snow tripled in volume to a full blizzard, I worked my way through the Yellow Pages, checking every K-Mart and toy store in the immediate area, gathering a pretty healthy range of sarcastic responses from harried salespeople.
“It’s ok, Mama. There’s none around here.”
“Keep trying.” My mother obviously considered that check a sign of some sort.
So I called that toy store where we first saw it. They took forever to answer, but when they did they said, like everyone else had, it had been sold out for weeks…
…however, someone had placed one on hold and was supposed to pick it up by five but they never did, and store policy was to put it back on the floor but there wasn’t anyone in the store because it had snowed an inch and a half in the last hour with four more inches on the way; it was now six o’clock, and they closed for the holiday at seven. If we came by, by seven o’clock, we could have that one.
I relayed the shopkeeper’s message to her with a “well, we tried” shrug and a smile. But my mother wasn’t smiling.
She called them right back. “Are you SURE you have the exact thing we’re looking for? The exact one? And you’ll keep it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ok, we’re on our way.”
I may never get the opportunity to ride on Santa’s sleigh, snow everywhere, wind buffeting my coat, near zero visibility, but this Christmas Eve ride was twice that. I’ve seen my mother drive a great deal, she is always a safe and prudent driver, but never one to back down from an automotive challenge: it was impossible, roads not yet cleared, and only 40 minutes to compete a 45 minute trip (in good weather).
The parking lot was under two inches of unbroken snow when we arrived. My mother drove right up to the front door. It was 7:10 on our car clock. We jumped out and walked to the front door, the lights were still on, and the manager saw us. We identified ourselves, and he looked very surprised… it was clear we had driven a very long way. He led us inside to the one open cash register, checked us out, and wished us both a Merry Christmas.
My mother put the track in the trunk of the car, as not to ruin the Christmas surprise, and we started the even more exciting and dangerous trip back home, this time racing not time, but Santa himself, since we only had a couple of hours to make that gingerbread house and get to bed.
There was no way on Earth I could have been “nice” enough to have deserved all that. I did try to be kind, and fair, and not a little jerk or whatever, but that was some Torreto Family level driving.
I’m sure that every time my mother saw me play with that track for the next five years she hoped that I would remember where it came from: well, here it is, forty-five years later, and I definitely do. The experience outlasted the toy. Which makes sense, because the story was the real gift.
Naughty and Nice.