All that he can ask for

Christmas brought an embarrassing number of gifts this year and an abundance of reading material. (My rough estimate is that I have 3,500 pages in front of me for 2012. That includes one novel so big it could be used for self-defense.)
But one thing I’d been hoping for wasn’t under the tree.
That’s probably because my family thought I was joking.
I was. But, just the same, when the object of my desire popped up in a post-Christmas sale for a fraction of its original price, it caught my attention.
Not wanting to be swayed into an impetuous decision, I dutifully checked out the online reviews of the product.
Two were positive, giving it five stars.
Two were negative. One said the ordered item didn’t work. The other person had — for reasons I cannot fathom — ordered eight of the things. Apparently, after sobering up, the consumer thought that wasn’t such a good idea.
I hesitated. I waffled. And then I ordered.
My wife rolled her eyes the way they teach wives to roll their eyes in those pre-marital counseling sessions. The daughter home for the holidays shook her head and probably posted something on Facebook about how weird her father is.
The order went in, and the calendar slowed down.
Suddenly, I was the equivalent of a 10-year-old who had sent in boxtops from Sugar Pops in hopes of getting a Wild Bill Hickok cap-gun.
The mailman came. The mailman went. And my package didn’t arrive.
Finally, on Saturday morning, when Sally was due to head back to law school and we were scheduled to take my sister and her husband to the airport, I said at breakfast, “You know what would be really cool?”
“What?” said my eye-rolling wife.
“It would be really cool if my tarantula came today,” I said.
(Take a moment to roll your own eyes, if you’d like.)
The item that had gotten my attention was in a National Geographic catalog: A remote-control model of a tarantula.
And not just any tarantula but a red-kneed Mexican beauty the size of a grown man’s hand.
What could be cooler?
(Another eye-rolling may be appropriate.)
At first, I thought it would be a great present for our nephew in Arizona. But I knew his mother would kill me. Right after she smashed the toy tarantula to pieces.
Then I thought of Ilya, the son of a great friend from the former Soviet Union. He’s about the same age as our nephew, and his mom teaches at Georgia State University in Atlanta. Surely, I thought, he’d love it.
Maybe. But his mother certainly wouldn’t.
So when Christmas rolled around, no one on our list received the tarantula I’d been eyeing.
What else was I to do when the price dropped by 70 percent but order the doggoned thing for myself?
Saturday afternoon, when we got back from the airport, there was a box waiting for me on our front step.
The tarantula had arrived.
And I was 10 years old.
I quickly opened the box. “Isn’t that awesome?” I asked my wife, whose eyes had begun to hurt from rolling so often. “I need batteries. Two triple-A for the spider and two double-A for the controls.”
As I struggled to get the plastic wrapping off, she found the necessary batteries and a small Phillips screwdriver to get the compartments open.
Two minutes later and my very own tarantula was doing my bidding, scuttling around on the kitchen floor.
It’s ugly and creepy, and its eyes glow red. Sure, it makes a little more noise than I’d hoped, since it sounds more like a remote control car than a real tarantula.
But it’s all a boy could ask for.[[In-content Ad]]