One present Mom always asks of her six kids for Christmas and birthdays is a one-page story from our childhood. Below are the six I've written so far.

My Pee-Wee league coach did not see baseball greatness in me. He probably didn't see greatness in anyone on my team, since, as the beginning of what became a long tradition in the Thomson Family, I ended up on the the losingest bunch in Rexburg, the Food Center team. On the first day of practice, I showed up with Dad's old three-fingered mitt, the kind you might see in historical black-and-white baseball photos. I wish I still had it; it's probably worth something. Our coach was batting baseballs out so we could practice fielding. The first time the ball came to me, I learned two good lessons, pointers suggested to me later by my coach. First, don't hold your mitt in front of your face. From my vantage point, it seemed as though the ball went right through the mitt, which isn't impossible, since the fingers were sort of floppy. His second suggestion was predictable: Get a real mitt.

Well, my nose recovered and I got my own mitt, which I still have, though it probably isn't worth anything - yet - but that wasn't enough to create greatness. My coach tried to limit the damage by putting me in right field (nobody hits to right field) and by using an interesting strategy he tried only once. We were losing, as usual, but the coach must have seen some hope of winning, so he told me to crouch down as low as I could, but not to swing. I was a little guy, even for this team, so the rectangle between my shoulders and my knees was small to start with. When I crouched at the plate, the strike zone shrunk to about an inch. I hunkered down and watched three pitches go by, as instructed, and struck out without a single swing.

The most vivid memory in my short career came near the end of the second season. I was up in the bottom of the ninth with two away and Food Center down by two. My team members liked me, but they were realistic and had already started already packing up the gear. By the time the dust settled from my second strike, all the bats were in the bag but mine. You probably think I'm leading up to the part where I hit a grand slam and won the game, right? Sorry. Not quite. What I did do was hit a double, for the first and only time, and drove in a run to boot. The next guy struck out, so we still lost, but not because of me! Even now, I clearly remember standing out of breath on second base, my heart pounding so hard the thumping filled my chest. Part of it was the thrill of my greatest play ever. Part was the suspense, waiting for a chance to take third. Part of it was simply that I was a bit winded; I had never had occasion to sprint so far around the infield before.

I didn't play much baseball after that, and I was a little hesitant when the Millstream Ward had their baseball and picnic outing in the summer of 1991. It sounded fun, so I decided to risk the embarassment. With virtually no practice for over 20 years, I could suddenly, magically, play baseball! I never struck out and never made a field error during the whole game. In fact, I was one of the better players there. I have also noticed that with moderate effort I made rapid progress in basketball, bowling, and other sports during my senior year at Madison High, and I have since easily picked up things like Tae Kwon Do, dancing, and volleyball. Mom has observed that my physical coordination developed late, and cites examples like my piano playing and penmanship. Maybe that's true, because something clearly happened between the Millstream picnic and my historic Pee Wee league double.

FIRST GRADE

My best friend in first grade was my second cousin, Gary Hoopes. He was cool because he had a chemistry set and a pair of walkie-talkies. He was also very bright and we spent a lot of time together. We spent recess in the vacant lot next to the playground looking for parts of old machines and planning how we were going to build robots out of them. One day we found a can of paint thinner and hid it in the coat closet. Maybe it wasn't paint thinner, because everybody made quite a fuss when they found out, and they seemed pretty concerned that it might have dripped on the way in. The first grade class was so big they had to divide it in two, with Grandma Thomson taking the other half. Boy, was she lucky - if it was really luck, that is.

SECOND GRADE

The principal at Curtis Elementary and I were on a first name basis. Well, actually, I guess I was on a first name basis with him; he was, of course Mr. Sorenson to me, a rather unfortunate choice of names, being so close to "Mr. Sore Head" that none of the kids called him "Sorenson" behind his back. My recollection is that I visited his office more often than I really deserved. You know how it is - you melt crayons on the radiator once, and after that, every time they find Crayola wax dripping down the side they blame you.

THIRD GRADE

Nothing of interest happend in third grade. I was a perfect angel.

FOURTH GRADE

Mrs. Jensen kept me and Gary Hoopes after school one day. I can't imagine why. Maybe it had something to do with unfinished work, since I was usually more interested in building robots out of milk cartons and other materials in my desk than I was in studies. When she left us alone, we began exploring. I say "we," but I think Gary mostly watched and I mostly explored. Gary and I remained friends until sometime in Jr. high school, where our interests began to diverge. He was not always a good example for me, but this day it was my turn. We (again, "we" is translated as "I") hid her shoes in someone's desk and sprinkled glitter in her closet. I'm not proud of this episode, a perspective that began the next day when Mrs. Jensen pointed out that she had spent quite some time hunting for her shoes and that she had a pretty good idea who was responsible. Her uncanny sleuthing was aided by the fact that Gary and I were the only ones in the room at the time. My punishment, she explained, was that I had to tell my parents. That would have been adequate, I think, but when I arrived at home, Mom greeted me with the most innocent "So, how was school today?" that you can imagine. Having spent nine years aquiring wisdom, and having frequently observed my parent's reaction to my quests for knowledge and experience, I knew that tone of voice, and wasn't fooled for an instant. I knew she knew, but I told her anyway. Dad's performance was no better. He walked into the room and leaned back on the bed, so casual he was fit to bust, and asked, "So, how was school today?"

I recently (Thanksgiving 2004) visited Grandma Thomson, who was teaching fourth grade at the time, and she said that Mrs. Jenson told her she would try to catch me not listening. She would see me working on something in my desk (probably building cardboard robots or rubber band powered darts) instead of paying attention so she would try to catch me by calling on me, but I could always repeat back to her what she had been saying. This is a skill I maintain to this day. I can repeat the most recent sentence or two word for word, even if I'm actually not listening. This talent is extremely useful on dates. Just don't ask me to relate what you said more than a minute ago. Mrs. Jensen told Grandma that I was driving her crazy, and apparently I was, because she is now living in a mental hospital. I'm sure I wasn't her only problem student, but I can't help feeling a little bit responsible.

FIFTH GRADE

When I was eight, I had to go to bed at 8:00. When I was nine, my bedtime was 9:00. When I turned 10, I waited for my bedtime to slide to 10:00, but that never happened. I didn't like going to bed early, because I didn't sleep for hours, it seemed. I would lie awake thinking about robots and how to make them work by remote control using vibrating fishing line tuned to specific frequencies, machines I had seen at Disneyland, and other gadgetry I had no hope of building at that age, though if I realized that, it didn't seem to matter.

I don't think people naturally need sleep, really. Parents force kids to sleep so they can get some peace. The kids go along with it because of natural selection; if they didn't the parents would eventually kill them. Years of enforced naps and bedtime form habits that follow kids into adulthood. I remember taking so-called naps while we lived in "Jackie's House" (I was about 8, I guess). The white bedspread had decorative grids of lumpy patterns that left rows of dots on my face. I would just lay there, watching the clock until my sentence was up. Now I find I need sleep nearly every night. It's a hard habit to break.

I had already built as many robots out of paper, thread, glue, and cardboard as I could think of, so I started on projectiles built from toothpicks and rubber bands. I shot one during class in the general direction of Mrs. McPheters, not really intending to hit her and not disappointed when it veered off. "Missed," I said, quietly enough I thought no one could hear. "No you didn't," she answered, and confiscated my gear. Fortunately for both of us, I had not yet learned to put pins in the tips, and when I did, I focused mostly on firing at the bulletin boards. By the end of the year Mrs. McPheters had a fine collection of stuff in her lower left desk drawer, but our desks were open in the back, out of her sight, so her raids did little to slow me down.

I don't think my experimenting affected my tendency to pay attention in class, but they may have had something to do with my failure to turn in assignments. Or maybe it was my lack of an attention span, something I miss to this day. I remember going home in the dark once by the time I finished a math assignment. It wasn't entirely my fault, the way I look at it. I mean, what do they expect is going to happen when they put coded answers at the bottom of the page? What motivates a fifth-grade boy to work subtraction problems (especially where you have to borrow) when there is a secret code to break? Nothing, except that when I turned in the assignment, Mrs. McPheters asked, "Where is your work?" Well, I had none. I hadn't actually done the problems. I had merely written the answers from the broken code, so I had to do it over.

Aside from math and SRA, I liked fifth grade. My favorite part was building paper mache' volcanoes that really errupted. I wrote up an illustrated tutorial on volcanoes that we distributed to the third grade class when my group went to show ours. Grandma Thomson, having been spared in the first grade, was unfortunate enough to be teaching the class my group visited for the lecture and demonstration. We poured the yellow powder into the main volcano, lit it, and watched it erupt beautifully. Then we explained that there are sometimes multiple eruption points, and pointed to a small side volcano, which we lit also. I had once found a firecracker on the sidewalk, pulled the fuse out, put it back in, and lit it, but it only fizzed. I reasoned that this would always happen, so a firecracker with the fuse extracted and reinserted seemed just the thing for our mini volcano. Of course, it didn't fizz. It exploded, taking part of our display with it and blowing burned volcano powder, into the air. You could hear the blast all down the halls of Lincoln Elementary and some volcano dust went down Gary Hoopes's back. It itched enough that he had to go home. It was a day that neither I nor Grandma will ever forget.

SIXTH GRADE

Sixth grade was a great time. We learned six weeks of Spanish and started writing stories. Mr. Jensen would let us read any stories we wrote to the class. I became well-liked because mine were the longest and delayed the next lesson that much longer.

I also made friends with David Brown. One day, when the class was watching a movie, and the room was dark, we sneaked back and hid in the cabinet under the sink. When Mr. Jensen found out, he didn't kick us out as we expected; he wired the door shut and locked us in. We thought that was grand, since we had prepared ourselves with cans of pudding and other stuff to keep us occupied. We tried the experiment where you drop a lit piece of paper into a milk bottle and watch it suck a boiled egg inside, except we didn't have a boiled egg so I put my hand over the top. It didn't try to suck my hand inside, but it did burn my hand. Once people started to smell smoke, Mr. Jensen finally let us out.

SEVENTH GRADE (I know 7th grade is actually Jr. High, but hey, it's my story.)

My first year in Jr. high was a turning point in my scholastic career. It was my last piece of childish mischief (I only participated in adult practical jokes thereafter), the only time I remember not getting caught, and the first time I started paying attention to my grades.

The Jr. high school, then next to Washington school had large ventilation shafts (or they may have been fireplaces at one time - it was a very old building) with openings about a yard square in the wall of each room. David Brown and I discovered that we could duck inside and climb up by bracing our feet and back against opposite sides. The shafts led to the attic, so you could exit one room and appear in another. This was rather dangerous. Some of the shafts were two stories high and there would be nothing to grab on the smooth shaft walls if we slipped, though we thought little of it at the time. Once we emerged into the home economics room and surprised a teacher working late. David made up some story and she either believed it or didn't care to do anything about it.

I had not been turning in my English assignments and one day the teacher told me she was sending a deficiency report home, that I was failing the class and that if I worked hard I would be lucky to get a "D." That got my attention. With some encouragement from Mom and Dad, I buckled down and ended up with a "C." I had not previously cared about grades, other than the one day per term when we took report cards home and Deidre had all "Excellent"s and I had mostly "Good"s. Starting at about this point in the seventh grade, I began taking assignments seriously, and my grades steadily improved over the next few years until I was getting straight "A"s in college. Now I have a job where I'm paid to goof off. I sometimes have a desire to go back to some of my grade school teachers and say, "See? I did amount to something after all!" I'm sure Mrs. Jensen would drool on herself for joy. (I think I need to edit out that last line.)

GIVING TALKS IN SUNDAY SCHOOL

When I was in junior Sunday school, Mom helped me prepare for my talks. I have since wondered how other kids did it, since they didn't have the benefit of Mom-David hieroglyphics. They probably memorized what they could and fumbled through the rest, but I had a secret code, known only to me and Mom. I was too young to read, so Mom rehearsed my talks with me and wrote it out in pictures on 3" x 5" cards. The notes were arranged in rows like real writing, but consisted of drawings of people, houses, and other symbols that only I understood because I had practiced with Mom. It worked pretty well; I don't remember ever getting stuck or lost.

ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND

When Niel Armstrong stepped onto the moon, Deidre and I got to watch. It was well past our bedtime, but it was a special occasion, and we were allowed to stay up till they left the spaceship. I was dissapointed that we couldn't see the LEM (Lunar-something-Module) land on the moon, but Dad explained that they didn't have cameras on the moon to shoot it. We didn't get to stay up as late as we planned because the astronauts got excited and got permission from Mission Control to exit early. It would have been 2:30am, but it happened at 11:00pm, or something like that. Deidre and I went downstairs, opened the sofa bed, and watched the whole thing on the old black-and-white tube TV we got from Grandma Hoopes. We were able to see Niel Armstrong descend the ladder and stand on the moon. For a kid interested in science nearly from birth, I was captivated by the images.

Staying up late was a special treat when we were little. We had tricks for staying up past bedtime, reading Hardy Boys books under the covers with flashlights or creeping around the corner and watching TV from the hall. I don't know if Mom and Dad knew, but they didn't do anything if they did, so the effect was the same. Even better than sneaking around was the deal we worked out sometimes where we would go to bed at 8:00 (instead of the usual 9:00), and Mom and Dad would wake us at 11:30 to watch the late night movies. It was usually a Marx Brothers or budget science fiction film. We were sometimes too excited to sleep at 8:00, then too tired to watch the movie at 11:30, but getting up in the middle of the night equaled or surpassed any enjoyment we got from the film itself.

HAND LOTION GOOP

The first time I remember using hand lotion was at Grandma Thomson's. Someone else was putting it on and gave me some. It left my hands all goopey, so I went in the bathroom and washed it off, as I would have done with soap. Someone asked me how I liked it and I said it left my hands gooey. Then (it may have been Aunt Loa) they told me I was supposed to rub until it soaked in, not wash it off. I understood, but I don't think that as a child I ever used hand lotion again.

THOMSON MISSIONARIES

I remember when Dale left on his mission. We went to the Idaho Falls train station to see him off. As he said goodby and stepped onto the train, Grandma Thomson was crying and Dad put his arms around her. She may have been sad to see him leave, but it seemed to me she wanted us to know she was also happy because all she could say through her tears was, "I'm so proud." (Since I wrote this, I watched "The Other Side of Heaven," where Elder Groberg also leaves from Idaho Falls. It was a lot like that.)

On the night Reed returned from his mission we all went out to the Idaho Falls airport - a huge place, it seemed to me then. They didn't have exit ramps, so we were all out on the tarmac when the plane pulled in and they wheeled the stairway up. I remember Dad, Grandma, and Dale being there. When Reed stepped out of the doorway, Dale shouted so everyone would hear: "There he is! The fat one!" I was very young and didn't understand Dale's humor. I couldn't find Reed because I was looking for a fat guy. When I saw him I was a puzzled because he didn't look so fat to me.

These emotional and exciting scenes made an strong impact on me. Another thing I think about when I remember these events is what a fine family Grandma raised by herself. Deidre and I would go over to Grandmas and Dale and Reed would tease us or play with us - we didn't care which. At an age where I was fascinated by tape recorders (about six years old) they had a small reel-to-reel tape deck that we played with. One day Dale was fixing it with a soldering iron and I touched the iron to a fragment of plastic. It melted to the tip and Dale tried to shake it off and broke the soldering iron. I was sad because then he couldn't fix the tape recorder. I think I learned pig Latin and turkey Latin from Dale and Reed. They showed us that if you press the back of your hands hard against a door frame for one minute, your arms float up in the air. I idolized all my uncles, but Dale and Reed especially set good examples for me and I first learned about what missions were from watching them go.

For many years I imagined that all missionaries left on trains. When I got my call I didn't know of any train stations around, so I expected my family to see me off to the LTM (Language Training Mission, now the MTC) from the Rexburg bus station. When I mentioned it to Dad, he was surprised and said no, of course they would be driving me to Provo. The thing that sticks out in my mind from my farewell to my family in the room where the missionary goes one way and the family goes the other was that Scott was sad. I knew I would miss my famly, but I wasn't as sad because I had so much ahead. I guess Scott wasn't getting anything fun in return. He couldn't speak. He just leaned against me and looked sad.

LIVING INSIDE THE EARTH

When I was little - maybe five - I thought we lived inside the world. I don't know where I got the idea, but it stuck with me for a long time. Everytime I learned a new fact, I force-fit it into my view. I knew the world was round, not flat, so I assumed that we lived in the bottom. I remember Uncle Dale saying that the earth wasn't really round, rather it was egg-shaped, so I pictured a hollow egg, small-end up, with all of us living in the bottom. The sides were sky-colored and the bottom so large that it appeared flat. I figured there must be some point where the bottom joined the sides, and I imagined what it must be like to visit the corner. I wondered how far away it was. I was curious if it got steeper and steeper or if it turned up abruptly, with a curvature of a few feet, so you could reach up and touch the side. I asked Dad, "Can you touch the side of the earth?" He said yes, and added a brief explanation, which I simply molded to fit my mental scenario. I estimated that it must turn abruptly, since I thought I should have seen a gradual incline from where I lived, had it existed.

I was interested in space travel and puzzled over how rockets got out from inside. Once I asked Dad how they got out, and he gave me some kind of answer. Neither he nor I realized what different worlds we were envisioning. I concluded that the top must be open so space ships could get out, and that it was so far away we couldn't see the opening. I wasn't sure how the hole could be small enough and far enough away to be invisible, but wide enough to let us see the stars. These notions of a corner and an opening I couldn't see bothered me but I never considered that my whole paradigm might be wrong.

I don't remember the day I finally sorted it out. Dad says when he was a boy he noticed that clouds always drifted in during the afternoon. He concluded that clouds held still while the world turned beneath, so that we passed under the clouds once per day. And look at him - a big meteorology professor! Now, of course, I'm much smarter and so I understand that we live outside, on the surface, and that gravity holds us down. Except sometimes I wonder about that giant guy holding the world up. Don't people who live where his hands touch the earth get squished?

TOOTSIE POPS AND LOVE SCENES

When I was about 10, there was an advertisement on TV where kids were eating Tootsie Pops at a theater, watching a Western film. The camera would alternate between the feasting children and scenes on the screen as the narrator said, "It's lasting through the escape scene." (somebody is breaking out of jail - the kids are still eating Tootsie Pops), "It's lasting through the chase scene." (the posse is chasing the outlaws), and so on, ending with, "It's even lasting through the love scene." In this last part the victorious hero is kissing the girl.

At about this same age we noticed that Dad paid quite a lot of attention to Mom. One day they were standing in the kitchen kissing, and it seemed they had been for a while. They knew Deidre and I were watching, but paid little attention to us. Deidre and I were all agog and tittered to each other "It's even lasting through the love scene." We thought it was pretty funny at the time, but as I've grown up I've always appreciated things like seeing Mom and Dad hold hands as they go places and the fact that I always knew they loved each other.

Christmas was a big deal in the Thomson home, and we started getting excited as soon as the first winter snow fell. There was plenty to be excited about - presents, school vacation, sledding, decorations, candy, and specials on TV like Frosty the Snowman (with Jimmy Cagney), The Grinch, Rudolph (with Burl Ives), and The Peanuts. As soon as the lights went up after Thanksgiving we knew it was close. One of our favorite family activities was driving around looking at the Christmas lights. Main Street in Rexburg was spectacular (for a kid) because there were lights and ornaments on poles and extending over the street. These lights were all the large 120 volt variety, since miniature bulbs didn't exist. We also searched for homes with bright displays so we could drive by and gape. We liked to turn our tree lights on and the room lights off and just sit and look at the tree and get excited, and maybe rearrange a few lights and ornaments so it would look even better. Today, when I see large colored bulbs like the ones across main street and at the hospital and like the ones Dad strung along the roof of our house, it reminds me of Christmas time as a boy.

In our younger years, we always went out to the woods for a Christmas tree. Sometimes we took snow mobiles, which was much easier than dragging the tree on foot. Much of the fun was hunting around for one just the right size, even on all sides, and shaped like you expect. It was never perfect, so we would always position the ugly side against the wall. One thing we put on our tree that I never see anymore (2002) is 2mm wide strips of silvery plastic to look like icecyles. They looked cool, but tended to spread throughout the house.

I only remember once meeting Santa. I worried how he would get in because we had no chimney, so I asked him. He suggested we leave a window open a crack. I didn't understand the expression and couldn't figure out why I was supposed to crack the window. I didn't try it, fortunately, and Santa made it in somehow.

One year we were in the car on Christmas Eve and Bruce spotted the red blinking light at the top of the KRXK transmitter antenna. He went into a panic, thinking it was Rudolph's nose, and urged us home as fast as possible, lest Santa should come before we could get to bed. Santa's rule about being in bed was very strict, and none of us wanted to find out what would happen if he arrived to find us up. In fact, the bedtime rule extended well into the pre-holiday season as Mom and Dad leveraged our desire to get on Santa's good side to get us to bed on time. Deidre swears to this day that she was awake one year and spied Santa's boot as he stood just past the edge of the doorway, but he must not have seen her, because we did not find the next morning that we had suffered any.

As we got older, a delightful tradition emerged around Mom and Sherri's debates over things like how soon to put up the Christmas tree. I suspect Mom was probably willing to put it up anytime, but she seemed to enjoy teasing Sherri and making her wait as long as she could stand it. We, of course, enjoyed watching them bicker. As soon as Sherri started quizzing Mom if she had bought the presents yet and how many there were, suggesting she had better get started, Mom invented a new game called, "Oh, we've been pretty busy. I don't know if we'll get to it this year." She could keep Sherri fretting for weeks with that one.

Another important Christmas preparation was making chocolates. Dad was in charge of melting the chocolate in the oven and Mom was in charge of everything else. She has always been the expert in creative stuff like embroidery, cake decorating, and photograph coloring and retouching. Chocolates fell into that category and none of us could do it as neatly as she could, so we only got to dip a few until we got older. She would let us stir the fondant, which we had to do so it would come out smooth. Sometimes the candy would be cooked too hot or too long or something or a single grain of sugar would fall into the mix and it would crystallize and we would have to start over. We were all involved in rolling the soft centers into balls and arranging them on large waxed paper sheets. We would open the windows so the house would be cold and the chocolates wouldn't turn out speckled. We liked the speckled ones because we kept those, while other more nicely formed specimens were boxed up as gifts. Our favorites were the cherry chocolates. We didn't like waiting two weeks for the centers to liquify, but they tasted better if we waited.

Two or three of the best chocolates were reserved for Santa's treat on a plate next to a glass of milk. (I understand families with less talented Moms substitute cookies instead.) Santa never disappointed us, and this last-minute bribe was always gone the next morning. When I have a family, my kids will set out speckled, misshapen chocolates next to a note reading, "Your glass of milk is in the fridge so you don't have to drink it warm."

We all knew exactly what to expect on Christmas Eve. We turned on the tree lights and Dad read "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" from a big illustrated book with a picture of Santa on the front. Santa's eyes opened and shut as you tilted the book up and down. I don't remember this, but Mom and Dad drove for miles to find the book one Christmas Eve in Ft. Leonardwood so they could read it to Deidre and me. (I have searched far and wide for another copy but have not found one.) After the story, we hung the stockings in order of age by the fireplace. Mom told us about the dreadful stockings she had as a girl, and how ugly they were and how badly they itched, but that she appreciated them at Christmas because they were long and held lots of candy. One year Larry hung up one of Dad's giant army bags instead of a proper red and white stocking. The next morning he opened it to find a huge lump of coal.

At some point in the evening, we knew Santa would drive by the house with his sleigh bells ringing. I'm amazed that not a single kid has ever questioned, "Say, has anyone else noticed that Grandpa disappears just before the bells start and returns shortly afterwards?" If you still don't get it, ask yourself: Why is Clark Kent never around when Superman show up?

One would-be tradition that never really caught on was a reenactment of the nativity scene by the kids. Somehow, Mom felt that wise men dancing the Cancan in their bathrobes to the song "We Three Kings" was less than reverent, and in subsequent years she did not request a repeat performance. We did a re-enactment one year and even held a practice at Grandma's. (She took pictures, which we have somewhere.) It had everything that the original performance had, plus it ended in a pyramid (or possibly some equivalent pose). A couple of times we tried Christmas caroling in Mom and Dad's room on Christmas morning while they were still in bed. This met with a more favorable response, but we were grown up by then and after a couple of years the older kids had dispersed.

Another Thomson tradition was scrupulous self-discipline. You could look, but no one was to shake presents, peel away corners of wrapping paper, or open anything early. I was aghast the first time I heard of families unwrapping one gift on Christmas Eve or kids waking early and opening stuff before the parents were awake. In our home, no one so much as looked at the tree until everyone was up, dressed, and until breakfast was finished and the dishes washed. The kids were just as adamant about this routine as the parents. Only then would we line up, oldest to youngest (so the older ones could see the younger kids' faces), wait for Dad to go ahead and get ready with his camera, and file downstairs to the family room. We were awestruck at the sight of the tree lit up and with presents piled high underneath. There were always more than we ever dreamed there would be. As we grew older we learned to deal with the inevitable disappointment of finding that the largest ones were always to Mom from Dad. Order reigned at the opening also, and we would not unwrap anything until we had showed Mom the tag so she could write it down and then note what we received and from whom. When we learned to write we kept our own lists and turned them in to her at the end.

Once the presents were all open, we loaded up our favorite toys and went to visit the grandparents. I suppose we were happy to see them, but we also knew they would have more presents for us.

My favorite present ever was a spy briefcase from Grandpa and Grandma Hoopes. They usually gave us great gifts, but as soon as I saw this one, I couldn't move or speak. I just sat back and stared in disbelief for a few seconds. It had secret compartments, a telescope, a transmitter and receiver, a Morse code signaler, and all sorts of decoders and other covert spy stuff. I played with it for months until I inevitably became more interested in what was inside the electronic gadgets and took it apart. I ultimately destroyed it and stashed the parts away for something I imagined I would build someday.

My hardest Christmas ever was in 2nd grade when Christmas fell on a fast Sunday. We still opened presents and there was lots of candy in the stockings, but we couldn't eat any until after church. It wasn't awful. We tried to be good sports about it and Mom and Dad said they were proud of us.

It's interesting that most of my happiest holiday memories center around my family. It's no wonder that I fly home every year for Christmas. As a child, presents were important and I took for granted that my parents and brothers and sisters were part of the celebration, but now gifts carry little real meaning and what I treasure most is my family.

When I was in 2nd grade we lived in Salt Lake City while Dad finished his masters degree at the University of Utah. We stayed in one of the most marvelous places I ever lived as a boy, University Village. It was a series of rings of apartments with a huge playground in the center of each. It was utopia for a 7-year-old. We had a giant sand pile and lots of friends. Jim and Ardeth Cannon lived in another circle and we visited them often. I'm sure they were nice people and all, but the only thing I really remember was that they had a toy smoking monkey.

University Village is where I perfected learning to ride a bicycle and where each of us got hurt the first week, Mom says. I only remember mine and Deidre's crashes. Each circle of apartments was connected to the others by asphalt paths, and one of the paths from our circle led down a steep hill. Deidre tried the hill on our toy John Deere tractor, but the only way to brake was to stop the pedals. They were connected directly to the wheels, so once she started down, the pedals began to spin so fast she couldn't put her feet back on. She held on for an admirable distance down the slope until the tractor veered off the path and rolled. This little machine was meant for basements and flat driveways and lacked the seatbelts, brakes, roll bars, and air bags you would need for a hill of this kind.

Deidre's injuries served a good purpose, though. We all learned from her example a valuable lesson that stayed with us the rest of our lives: Don't try riding toy tractors down steep hills without brakes until you've let your sister try it first.

My first crash was at least as spectacular. I had learned to ride an old black bicycle from Grandpa Hoopes's farm and had graduated to a sleek 2-speed. I loved to zoom down the same hill that had creamed Deidre, but I was safe because I was older and I had brakes. My favorite trick was to pedal as fast as I could to the edge of the slope, then crouch down and let gravity take over. Once at the bottom, the path ran straight a ways, then turned 90 degrees around a light pole. The pole was a curved metal tube, bent in the shape of the letter "C" facing toward the walkway, with the pipe at the bottom parallel to and lying flat on a slab of concrete planted in the ground. As I approached the turn, I would bank so hard to the right that I almost seemed to lay the bike on it's side, then rocket to the right and just barely stay on the path. I can still remember the thrill of having more speed than I had ever imagined with the wind blowing in my face and finishing the stunt off with my amazing banking turn. I did it again and again until one time I anticipated the turn and banked a few feet early. The pole knocked my front tire into the sky. The rest of the bike and rider followed. I don't remember where the bike came down, but I landed on the asphalt and collected the best batch of scrapes, cuts, and bruises I had ever been awarded from a single landing.

My best friend, Mark, lived on the opposite side of the playground and we spent most of our time together. Mark's mom once offered me some ice tea, but I didn't have to even think about it and said no thanks. Mark and I liked to dig sand traps - pits about two feet deep covered in newspaper. We camouflaged the newspaper in sand. We never caught any wild animals - or even any kids, for that matter, though Mark tried one out once himself and got his foot wedged in the bottom. There was one kid we would like to have caught. I can't remember his real name, so let's call him Sniveles. His mother didn't like me much. I can't imagine why. Maybe because I was always teasing her son and once threw sand in his face - but I'm only guessing. She once spotted our bear trap and gave it a disparaging glance. We assured her it would not catch her Sniveles, and she replied, "I certainly hope not." I can still picture a path worn in the grass between the Sniveles' house and my house from her going to tell my mom what I had done to her son this time.

I was sad when Mark moved away, and Mom & Dad let me stay out late talking to him. We sat out and talked until well after dark. I knew that I had one black hair near the back of my head, since Mom pointed it out when cutting my hair, and Mark explained that this was a transmitter and that he would use it to find me someday. I wanted to believe it and sort of did. I'm glad I'm not that gullible anymore. Mark still hasn't found me. It must have malfunctioned.

University Village was the age of discovery. It was the year Bruce discovered mirrors. There was a full-length mirror on one of the bedroom doors and when Bruce saw the kid on the other side, he yelled at him. The kid yelled back. Bruce screamed louder. Pretty soon they were both throwing a fit. This exchange carried on until Deidre and I were in hysterics. I, of course, have never fought with my reflection, since I'm wiser and I realize that one or the other is going to get his feelings hurt, and in the end, nobody really wins.

This was the year I discovered magnifying glasses, and that you can melt styrofoam worms and other bugs with them. I spent countless hours burning and melting stuff. I'm not sure why dads let 7-year-olds have lenses, but I was sure glad they did.

This was the year I invented a perpetual-motion machine. I had read in Childcraft about how to build an electric motor. I was familiar with bicycle generators, the kind that keep kids safe while riding at night by slowing them down to 2 mph. I proposed to Mom & Dad I could build a Childcraft motor, connect it to a bicycle generator, and they would run forever. They tried in vain to convince me that you would need to keep adding energy to keep it running. "Well," I allowed, "you might need to hit it to push it around faster if it slows down once in a while." Mom pointed out that this would be adding energy, but I remained unconvinced. Of course, I know better now. I realized that the only way to really build a perpetual motion machine is to separate a column of light fresh water from a column of dense salt water with two osmosis filters and let the solution circulate.

That same year I learned that food doesn't taste good when you're sick. I had the flu once and Mom agreed to fix anything I wanted, which of course was a peanut butter sandwich, but it tasted so bad I couldn't eat it.

There was no library close by, but the bookmobile visited regularly. We couldn't walk to school so we rode the bus to Curtis Elementary. On the bus I learned snappy tunes like, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school..." and other uplifting songs. My second grade teacher drew a 3x3 magic square on the board one day and offered a candy bar to anyone who could make another one. The object is to put the numbers 1 through 9 in the boxes so that the total of each row, column, and diagonal is the same. To this day, I cannot do it without a computer, but it occurred to me then that I could steal the teacher's, add one to each box, and that she wouldn't know the difference. She didn't, and handed over the chocolate. I liked this game a lot, so I added one to each box again and won another chocolate bar. The third time she was out of candy, so she gave me a quarter, but warned that this was the last one. Then I felt guilty, and admitted that I had just added one to each box. She didn't get it, though, and said, "Oh, that's interesting. I suppose if that works with your magic squares, it would work with this one I drew on the board also, right?" She never grasped that I had simply lifted her solution for my own. As an adult I mentioned this to Mom and she noted that my 2nd-grade teacher had seemed a little confused in general.

Fall was a wonderful time at this time of my life because that was when the new season of cartoons began. They would advertise them for weeks to build the excitement. Dad wouldn't let us watch the really good cartoons like "Johnny Quest" but there were still plenty of programs like "Spider Man" (decades before the 2002 movie hit the screens) and "Multi-Man" we could watch.

I have only a partial recollection of the doorknob incident, so much of this story is my version of Mom's version, but apparently I got my hands on a screwdriver one day. As Mom was walking home, she noticed that some of our neighbors would try to open their front door and the doorknob would fall off in their hand. Finally someone told her, because she was sure she would want to know, that her son was on the loose with a screwdriver. When Mom caught up with me she wanted to know where the screws were. How was I to know that? I can't keep track of everything, I'm just a kid. We went to the store, bought more screws, and I had to go around and fix the doorknobs. Now that is punishment! Imagine forcing a boy who loves screwdrivers to make restitution by playing with one even more. The worst part, according to Mom, was that people thanked me. A little reflection will highlight the fact that screws on the outside of a door is a security risk, since a burglar (or juvenile miscreant) need only remove the screws to gain access. I wonder if the Village manager appreciated me bringing this hazard to their attention. In any case, I don't remember them thanking me for that.

University Village was my first time being in a play "It Starts with Balloons." The only thing I had to do was come onstage and run to Mom. I remember the director coaxing me to act excited when I entered. One kid was playing with a volleyball stand backstage and smashed his finger and had to get a pin put in it. I learned a valuable lesson: Don't play with things you aren't supposed to. Since then, I have remembered and diligently lived by this rule my entire life.

Subject: Re: Christmas Story
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 14:12:23 -0700
From: ML Thomson
To: davidt@lucent.com

Thank you for the "University Village" story. I finally got around to looking at Christmas things, and really enjoyed reading it. Village.txt gives me the best format. Word perfect translates it fine. Notes from Mom: Here's how I remember the loose screw incident. It could also be in your journal. Unfortunately your Mom discovered the screw problem because another Mom came over and told on you. Her doorknob had come off in her hand when she had tried to open the door. Then, or later, she noticed someone upstairs having the same experience. I don't know how many others she noticed. She had seen you around, and knew us, so she came and told me you may know something about the screws. We asked you about it and you confessed. We asked how you did it, and you said with your fingernails. How many, we asked? You were vague about this, some had been too tight. What did you do with them? Threw them away (over your shoulder?) We took you to the complex you took them from, and had you go around and count. We stood back and watched, and you went to each door. If a screw was missing you made a motion with your hand as you counted it. Can you imagine your parents watching you circle the whole three building complex, top and bottom floors, counting? Several doors had some kind of solution rigged up, a big screw, tape or something. The Village manager didn't happen to carry that many screws in stock. We had to go to a store and just barely made it before closing time. The store clerk was pretty surprised at the size of our doorknob screw request. I think it took about all he had, and we didn't tell him why either.

This was the year Mom put a special list on the fridge for David. You were in trouble so often, it seemed like the only communication we had was getting after you for your misdeeds. I put up a list that said something like "Good Things David Does."

You did have a line to say in "It Begins with Balloons.". Your line had a big, and unusual word in it, which I don't remember right now. You had a hard time with the word. It was in a part of the play where many parts are said by different people in rhythm - somewhat like "rap". That made it hard for a little boy who has to use a difficult and unfamiliar word. I helped you a lot, and also tried to help you understand that to make a mistake is okay, even the other actors made mistakes. You told me that big people can make a joke and laugh off a mistake, but little people can't. You were right, and I have never forgotten that lesson you taught me.

Index:
SECOND BASE
HIGHLIGHTS FROM GRADE SCHOOL
CODES, THE MOON, AND LOTION
MISSIONARIES, GEOGRAPHY, AND LOVE SCENES
CHRISTMAS AT THE THOMSONS
UNIVERSITY VILLAGE

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