Day #53: 30 Days to 30: My First Big Disappointment
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Day #12: I know that a lot of people will laugh at me, but my first big disappointment in life happened on Christmas Eve when I was six years old. I think it was the first time in my life that I actually paid attention to Santa’s existence and I was completely obsessed with the idea of meeting him. I wrote a letter to Santa beforehand, left a pair of shoes close to the window at the beginning of the night and stood guard in my parents’ living room. Santa was expected to arrive in his helicopter at midnight (Helicopter?!? Yes, that’s how we roll in Brazil). It was probably the first time in my life that I didn’t fall asleep at 9pm. My mom says that she and my father were desperate to get me out of the house, but I wouldn’t leave. Well… I had my reasons! At midnight our neighbour asked me to go to her house to do something that was apparently really important. I left my house for less than 5 minutes only to see my dad rushing to the neighbour’s house telling me that Santa was at our place. Yes… people in my family take acting seriously! I remember feeling my heart jumping out of my chest as I was finally going to meet Santa! I rushed to the living room and found my gift close to the window, but where was Santa? Yep, you guessed it, he had too many gifts to deliver that night and had left in his helicopter. I still remember sitting on the floor and just crying for a long time… My mom still tells this story with a sad face, even though she laughs at what happened. I am not going to say that my parents scarred me for life on December 24th, 1988, but I will say that they were never successful with surprising me ever again. I am telling this story because no matter what you do, you will screw up your kids at some point anyway. However, since I am telling this story today and have laughed at it a couple of times, I will finish this blog post on a optimistic note saying that if you do screw your kids up, they might overcome it before they turn thirty.
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