What’s the best Christmas gift you’ve ever received? Aside from Jesus, of course ;-)
The red big wheel spinout speedster might be up there for me. Another one might be the year I got my very own jambox. But I’d have to say that the very best gift I’ve received wasn’t exactly a gift, in the way we normally think of gifts, but it did come around Christmas.
When I was in the fall of 7th grade, I took a shop class, where we learned about all kinds of tools for woodworking, electronics, and other practical applications. The final project was to build a lamp that looked like an old water pump. Everyone who had ever taken shop class had a lamp like that. My brother had one. Now it was my turn to make a lamp.
The instructions for this lamp were about as old as the book of Job, and I tried to follow them to the letter. Measuring the wood, measuring it again just to be sure, cutting the wood, sanding the wood, sanding the wood some more, gluing the wood, staining the wood, etc. When I got the cord attached to the socket and the socket in its place, I found that the socket wouldn’t sit square in its seat. It wobbled, and I had no idea why. I thought I had followed the instructions to the letter.
That Christmas break, everyone else was taking home a perfect little wooden lamp, except for me. I had the Charlie Brown Christmas tree of wooden lamps. I was capital-F Forlorn. I was embarrassed to show it to my parents, and especially to my brother (whose lamp was also perfect). But I remember my dad looking at it, thinking to himself for a moment, and then telling me he knew someone we could call about this.
He called his friend Jack Eggleston, who was the plant manager for the local manufacturer in town. I really didn’t want the guy whose plant built fancy pool tables to see my puny little lamp. But a few days before Christmas, we loaded up the lamp and took it over to Mr. Eggleston’s house. He took the lamp in his hands, turned it around, told me I did a nice job on the sanding and staining, and then he said he had an idea on what we could do. He got out his own toolbox, dug around and found a little nut. Then he slipped that little nut into place right below the socket, and voila—no more wobble! Just like that, it was fixed, and it worked perfectly.
That was nearly forty years ago now. Both my dad and Mr. Eggleston have long since died. But the lamp lives on! It stands on a side table in our den and still shines the light. And of all the Christmas gifts I’ve received over the years, I believe it was Mr. Eggleston’s small act of kindness toward this awkward kid that shines the brightest.
