The Greatest Gift

I got all sorts of loot for Christmas. Over the years I got Atari cartridges, bikes, and just about everything you could stick a Star Wars label on. But probably the best present I ever got was a roll of paper.

I realize this sounds like another in a series of stories where readers think I grew up in the Depression or the prairie or something, but it was absolutely true.

When I was 6 or 7, my parents got me a huge roll of butcher paper. It was about five feet long and probably about two feet in diameter. That made for a lot of paper. It had a cutter - sort of like how you'd cut off Saran Wrap, only not as toothy. I was a kid, after all.

I have no idea where my parents would have found a huge-ass roll of paper, but I'm assuming they found it at a garage sale, which is where they buy about 80 percent of their non-food items.

I don't remember actually finding it under the tree, and I'm not even sure I cared that much about it at the time, what with all the other stuff I presumably got.

Over time, however, it probably ended up being the present I used the most. I would draw Star Wars movie posters, huge, Bayeux Tapestry-sized recreations of World War II scenes (which were really just a bunch of tanks and airplanes and battleships blowing up other tanks and airplanes and battleships displaying Nazi flags), shark attacks, and who knows what else. Probably a lot of Peanuts characters.

I don't know what happened to all those pictures. It probably isn't too easy to keep a 4 foot long kid's drawing around for very long, but man, if I could recreate some of that stuff, I'd be hailed as a postmodern genius for my depictions of Snoopy in a TIE fighter shooting down a shark in a Nazi airplane. That would totally get me the front cover of Juxtapose.

In retrospect, it was a pretty genius gift. It kept me quiet and amused for...damn, years, now that I think about it, and it helped develop the chops to become the best artist in just about any school I went to. Until I met Joel Simmons in 5th grade. He probably had a similar roll of paper.

I probably stopped using it around middle school or so, and the roll of paper was stored in the garage, where I'm pretty sure I saw it last Christmas, but it's really hard to be sure, since my parent's garage is an accumulation of decade's worth of garage sale treasures.

If you're looking for a gift for your kids this year, see if you can track down a big-ass roll of paper. I mean, don't cheap out and not buy them the Talking Elmos, or Cabbage Patch Kid or Furby or whatever, but in the right hands, a big-ass roll of paper can amuse and entertain for years. Plus, it'll keep them quiet for a while.