What do you want for Christmas, pop, my kids ask?
Nothing money can buy, I tell them. What I want they don’t sell on Amazon or at Costco.
I want my best yesterday’s back for just a few hours on Christmas Eve.
I want to be a kid again on the first day of summer vacation, and feel the exhilaration of trotting around the bases after hitting my one and only home run in Little League.
I want to sit on the curb at the end of my paper route waiting for the Helms man so I could swap him a newspaper for a glazed doughnut.
I want to cruise Bob’s Big Boy on a Friday night after the football game, and get one more shot at that curve ball that froze me at the plate in high school to end the game.
I want to thank all the teachers who turned on the light bulb that made me understand and think for myself.
I want to be a rookie again sitting in my first newspaper city room banging out a story on deadline on an old Remington typewriter.
I want to hear the presses roll, and walk by a corner news rack and see my story on Page 1, above the fold. I want to sit at a Woolworth’s or Owl Drugstore lunch counter and watch the guy sitting next to me reading it over his BLT and side of fries.
I want another Sinatra album, and one more Dean Martin Christmas special. I want Johnny on at 11:30 p.m., and Cary Grant in one more Hitchcock thriller.
I want to hold my babies in my arms again, and watch them take their first steps. I want to push them on the swings and hold my breath as they climb the monkey bars.
I want President Kennedy to cancel his trip to Dallas, and the lessons of Vietnam to be learned, not repeated.
I want every bigot to walk in the shoes of those they hate for just a day — to see what it’s like to face so much hatred solely because of your skin color or religion.
I want democracy to live up to its name.
I want old people who can no longer remember the best days of their lives to wake up Christmas morning remembering them all.
I want our police officers,…
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