A present that shined (12/8/04)

Childhood Christmas presents date you.

Tell someone that you received the first Hot Wheels when you were a kid, and you've pretty much defined yourself as a forty-something.

Say that your first train was a Lionel O-gauge with the triple track, and you've given yourself away as over 60.

First generation Barbie doll with the black and white swimsuit, girls? I'm afraid that guarantees you're in your 50s.

This not particularly profound insight came to me the other day when I was shining my shoes in preparation for a string of holiday-related parties.

When I smelled the polish and reached for the brush, I remembered my own particular Christmas present milestone, the one that proves without contest that I was born in the first half of 20th century.

Who, today, would think of giving a kid a shoeshine box for Christmas?

Yet, there it was, undeniably those many years ago, not just for me but for thousands of other young American boys whose parents somehow felt that footwear cleanliness and maintenance were high priorities for us.

Looking back on it, I wonder what message that present was supposed to deliver.

I was an unreformed scuffer of my shoes, with a lazy tendency to drag my toes in the dirt. "Pick up your feet" would have been a decent motto for my childhood coat of arms.

Was that what they were trying to tell me? Was this a Christmas present that said, "New shoes are expensive. Take better care of them, you laggard."

At the same time, the implied message of the shoeshine box — mine was a wooden thing that must have weighed several pounds — was that the time had come to put childish things aside and get to work.

In those days, the comics and the Sunday funnies were full of gags that involved shoeshine boys working on the corner.

"Henry" — that long forgotten, mute, bald-headed kid whose comic ran for decades in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette without so much as a single laugh — had a shoeshine kit. (I'd say his parents probably gave it to him for Christmas, but my recollection is that he was an orphan in the great tradition of Little Orphan Annie.)

So, what was I to think, lo' those many years ago, when I opened the present that turned out to be a shoeshine kit?

In addition to the implied message that I looked a little scruffy, was I also to infer that my parents expected me to haul the thing up to Main and Meridian in hopes that some character out of the Sunday comics would stroll by and need a shine?

Maybe.

But it wouldn't have happened, because just like the shoeshine box "Henry" used to lug around in the comics, mine was a relic of an earlier era.

By buying it for me, my parents were reaching back to their own childhoods, I think, back to an era when a kid's first job was often shining someone else's shoes.

It was a good era. And shining shoes wasn't a bad way to launch a life of work.

By giving it to me, they were also sharing something from their own childhood in a simpler, less manic time.

A disappointing present?

I don't think so.

In fact, I think I'm just now beginning to appreciate how good it was.

Shine, mister?[[In-content Ad]]