Now that it’s well behind me, I feel that a childhood full of deprivation isn’t such a bad thing. Going through it sucks, sure. But the stories are much better when you’re an adult.

Not that I was really deprived, mind you. I had a roof over my head and a family that cared and provided for me…I just didn’t get everything that I wanted.

Being as the big day is upon us, I thought that I would share one of my favorite stories of childhood misery.

In 1982 I was ten years old, and there was nothing in the world that I loved more than STAR WARS. Well, maybe Dinosaurs, but those two things were pretty much in a dead heat. At any rate, this was the year before we bought a VCR, and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK was no longer in theaters.

In my family, before the VCR, you saw a movie once. That was it.

So all that I had left were my memories of the films, along with my action figures and a broke-down collection of Space ships. Two years previous, I had made an unsuccessful bid to get the Death Star space station play-set, and well, the failure still kind of stung a little. What I was really hoping for this time around was the MILLENIUM FALCON.

Well, I’ll be damned if on Christmas morning, there it was, sitting under the tree!

Finally, a proper ship for Han and Chewie!

After the usual opening of presents and other festive cheer, we headed off to Grandma’s house.

What, do you suppose, awaited me there?

Yes, that’s right- a second Millenium Falcon!

Holy crap, I now had my own Rebel fleet! Shit, if I wanted to be perverse enough, I could give the second one to Darth Vader! The list of possibilities seemed endless.

Unless you happened to be part of my family.

That being the case, I heard “You already got one of those for Christmas.”

My heart sank.

But then, “Well, I guess we’ll have to return it to Dolgin’s and get you something else.”

Something else?

Hot damn! To my ten-year old brain, that ship must have cost like what, $500 bucks? The list of possibilities, once again, seemed endless.

So a couple of days later, my parents and I go to return it, and I immediately haul ass to the toy aisle. There I’m greeted by the wondrous sight of Rebel Snow-speeders, the Hoth playset, and the awe-inspiring Imperial At-At walker.

Screw having two Millenium Falcons-diversity was the way to go.

I go to find my parents, to tell them the good news “I have decided to go with the At-At.”

Unfortunately, my father  had a realization in the meantime.

You see, one of the presents that I had received that year was Quizwiz, the electronic trivia quiz game. I couldn’t have cared less about it, but the old man thought it was fascinating.

For the price of one Rebel Smuggler’s space ship, we could get a large number of Quizwiz booklets, which plugged into the side of the thing. Each booklet was about a different subject, say sports, or literature or some other bullshit like that.

Instead of a titanic space battle of good vs evil, what did I end up with? A bunch of motherfucking Quizwiz booklets.

I honestly thought they were pulling my leg all the way until we got in the car to go home.

I was stunned. When the tears finally started falling, all I got was a stern lecture on how “I should be grateful that I got anything at all” and that “I shouldn’t be so damn inconsiderate.”

Man, what a gyp.

You know what the sad thing is? Next Christmas, I brought ‘ol Quizwiz to school, and Terry Skiles broke the fucker because he kept jabbing down on one of buttons over and over again.

Ah, well.

It’s a good story, though.