I'm Not Scrooge...I'm Just Broke
Source of Recipe
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Recipe Introduction
By Storm Stafford
List of Ingredients
It's said that you can never have too many friends, but Christmas
was just a week away and I had five people left to shop for on my
Christmas list and only three dollars to my name. How do you tell
your mother, brother and three friends that you can only spend sixty
cents on each of them?
"Let's set a price limit on our gifts this year," I suggested to
my best friend, Joanie.
"That's a good idea," Joanie agreed. "How about nothing over
five dollars?"
"How about nothing over sixty cents?" I felt like the biggest
cheapskate in the world.
"I guess this is where I'm supposed to say it's not the gift,
it's the thought that counts," Joanie smiled. "But don't blame me if
all you get is a stick of gum!"
It is almost impossible to buy anything for under sixty cents, so
it was really going to have to be very small gifts with very big
thoughts. I'd never spent so much time or effort trying to come up
with the right gift for the right person.
Finally, Christmas day arrived, and I was worried how people
would feel about my "cheap" gifts.
I gave my mother a scented candle with a note that said, "You are
the brightest light in my life." She almost cried when she read the
note.
I gave my brother a wooden ruler. On the back of it I'd painted,
"No brother in the world could measure up to you." He gave me a bag
of sugar and had written on it, "You're sweet." He'd never said
anything like that to me before.
For Joanie, I painted an old pair of shoes gold and stuck dried
flowers in them with a note that said, "No one could ever fill your
shoes." She gave me a feather and a Band-Aid. She said I always
tickled her funny bone and made her laugh until her sides ached.
To my other two friends, I gave one a paper fan and wrote on it,
"I'm your biggest fan." To the other, I gave a calculator that cost
one dollar and I painted a message on the back, "You can always count
on me." They gave me a rusty horseshoe for luck and a bundle of
sticks tied with a red ribbon because "friends stick together."
I don't remember all the other gifts that I got from people last
Christmas, but I remember every one of the "cheap" gifts.
My brother thinks I'm sweet. My mother knows she is the most
important person in my life. Joanie thinks I'm funny and I make her
laugh, which is important because her dad moved away last year and she
misses him and is sad sometimes.
I was worried I wouldn't have enough money for Christmas gifts,
but I gave gifts to five people and still had twenty cents left over.
We all still talk about our "cheap" gifts and how much fun it was to
come up with a gift that cost pennies but told someone how we really
felt about them. On my bookshelf, I still have a bag of sugar, a
feather, a horseshoe and a bundle of sticks...and they are priceless.
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