Chick Chat, Group Post

CHICK CHAT: What Did We Beg Our Parents For?

Ooh, the sweet anticipation of getting a gift! We’re sharing about what we begged our parents for…and whether we got it!

Lisa Q. Mathews

Believe it or not, I don’t think I ever begged my parents for anything big–except maybe for one. I’m pretty sure I whined on an as-needed basis for various dolls, stuffed animals, notebooks, and the latest Bobbsey Twin books. For the record, no amount of pleading scored me either an Incredible Edible bug factory or…sigh…that Suzy Homemaker oven. (Looking back, that was probably a Good Thing.) But what I really, really campaigned for was a baby brother or sister (my mom had me at 42). That didn’t happen either, and I was pretty upset about it. Sorry, Mom and Dad.

 Ellen Byron

When I was a kid, I was totes obsessed with these dolls called Liddle Kiddles. They were adorably teeny dolls that came in a variety of settings. The one I desperately wanted was the baby Little Kiddle who came with a crib and baby accessories. I begged for one for Christmas. (I so loved these dolls that I just did an eBay search where I discovered they made a Liddle Kiddle portable dollhouse that I never knew about and now I want to bid on it.)

Well, I had a TERRIBLE habit of sneaking around the house hunting for where my mother hid our Christmas presents. That year I tracked them down to the attic – and discovered no baby Liddle Kiddle for me. I sobbed about this to my mother, and I do not need to tell you how many ways she was mad at me for finding her hiding place and pawing through the gifts.

Needless to say, I never told her that a couple of years later, not only did I find the clothes she’d bought for me as Christmas presents… I tried them all on.

Leslie Karst

A horse. A real, live horse. As an eight-year-old, I swore it would fit under my bed, and then later, I whined that I could babysit to pay for its room and board. Finally, my dad told me that if I got straight As all through junior high school, he and my mom would indeed buy me a horse. I’d been an uninspired straight C student in elementary school, and he was hoping this bribe would change my ways.

Well, it did. I worked hard at school, and did indeed get straight As from 7th through 9th grade.

But then, by age 15 when I was about to start high school, I realized I no longer really wanted a horse. So my parents got what they had wanted all along: a daughter with good grades, and not having to fork out all the dough it takes to own a horse. Smart one, Dad.

Kathleen Valenti

I’m not afraid to say it: I coveted the Barbie Dream House with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns in a gazillion galaxies. The rooms! The elevator! The early-80s decor! I wanted that swanky party house so that Barbie could host fetes for Ken, Skipper and whoever else from my plastic menagerie decided to show up. After a rigorous campaign that would have impressed many a presidential hopeful, a giant box gift-wrapped with four different kinds of paper appeared beneath the Christmas tree. Reader, I received that Dream House, and it was a dream come true. It’s the only time I can remember getting such a decadent gift, and I’m still grateful to this day. It even beat the Barbie styling head thingie, which wrought some spectacularly awful–and so very memorable– hairstyle and makeup machinations.

Becky Clark

When I was in 4th grade, we lived in Casper, Wyoming. Now, if you’ve never been to Casper, Wyoming, you may not know that the wind has only NOT blown there for a seventeen-minute period on a June day in 1873. You also may not know that winters are so cold in Casper that your nose hair is frozen from October to May every year. I’ve attended many 4th of July picnics on Casper Mountain (a misnomer, but that’s a story for a different day) that included snowball fights. Have I set the stage properly? Okay, good. The thing I begged and pleaded and cajoled and pouted for was the most bee-u-tee-ful red pleather coat. I saw it draped across the shoulders of the JC Penney mannequin—dainty hand on jaunty hip—and vowed then and there I had to become that stylish. My mother disagreed. It’s not practical. You won’t be warm enough. It’ll crack. But I persisted. She looked at the price tag again, comparing it to the parka with the fur-lined hood, finally heaving a sigh. Now, we were poor, mind you, so it must not have been much more expensive or else no way would she be swayed by my extravagant desires. The red coat was mine! With one caveat: I had to wear it for the entire winter. I wore that red pleather coat all that frigid winter, wind cutting through me with only the red protecting me from the elements. I learned two lessons that year—bee-u-tee-ful things are not necessarily practical, and my mother was a wise, wise woman who would never stoop to saying “I told you so.” I was the envy of the playground, though.

Jennifer Chow

I begged and begged for a puppy from my parents. Specifically, I wanted a Labrador Retriever because that’s the kind of dog my friend had. Never mind that I always got knocked over when I visited their home—maybe that was half the fun. Anyway, I never got that dog. Particularly when we went into the restaurant business; we didn’t have time (or maybe my parents didn’t have the energy!) to properly care for and own a dog.    

Readers, drop us a note in the comments below!

67 thoughts on “CHICK CHAT: What Did We Beg Our Parents For?”

  1. When I was a pre-teen I had to have the Barbie Dream House for Christmas. I got one but it was made of cardboard, even the furniture. But I loved it anyway. Barbie sitting on her cardboard lawn chair which was next to her plastic convertible, pink of course. Then when I was a teen I wanted a portable record player. My Dad got me a used one but I was so thrilled to have it. My Dad worked as a firefighter at Ft Devens in MA and when the G.I.’s got transferred they sold some of their stuff so they wouldn’t have to move it. It was in near perfect condition and I used it for many years.

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    2. I love this! My mother didn’t approve of Barbies – she thought she was trashy – so by the time I got one, everyone had everything else and there was no way I’d catch up. I coveted that cardboard house!

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  2. One Christmas as a teenager, I peeked for gifts while my parents were out. Found a book (Tolkien) that I had asked for and items for other family members. Christmas morning I watched as nothing I had seen in the upstairs closet was opened. Later we talked about using our cash gifts from Grandma, and I said I would buy the book. Mom was silent. Christmas Eve evening, there was an extra delivery from “Santa”. Mom never said she knew and I never snooped again just in case.

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    1. Emily – was that a lesson learned. My mother could have taken a page from ours. Instead of teaching me a valuable lesson, I just got yelled at! Since I continued to snoop, she clearly needed to adopt a better approach, lol.

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      1. El, As teens, my sister and I unwrapped and rewrapped our Christmas gifts a couple of years — just being nosy. If my mom had already shopped and wrapped, it’s not like she was going to buy something else we pleaded for!

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  3. I remember one year, or maybe it was a two-year campaign, I was focused on a slot car track. Watching commercials of those little cars screaming around that black track, held in place only by the little pin that fit into the slot had me absolutely mesmerized.
    Well, Santa came through and I had a ball racing the cars around the oval track. Great memories!

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    3. My brother David was into Hot Wheels. Recently, after that section of I-95 was destroyed, someone posted a meme of how to fix it using the Hot Wheels loop-de-loop. I laughed hard at that!

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  4. Ellen, that is too funny.

    The only thing I remember begging for – being a child of the 80s – was a Cabbage Patch doll. My mother refused. They were ugly. They were expensive. I’d outgrown dolls.

    My mother’s aunt came through. Not only did I wind up with 2 Cabbage Patch dolls, I got the horse. They are still upstairs in a box in the attic.

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    2. Being way older than you, my mother got me into Madame Alexander dolls. I had Marmee from Little Women and one of our dogs ate her hair one day. I was bereft, so my parents took me to the New York Doll Hospital, an amazing place that sadly no longer exists. I got to pick out a new wig and don’t aske me why but I chose braids. So Marmee, mother to the Little Women, wound up looking like a 1960s tween.

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      1. Oh, I have 10 of those, too. Courtesy of my aunt. I had them on display, but the rubber for there limbs dried and snapped, so I need to find a doll hospital here in Pittsburgh. I have Marmee, too – and all the Little Women.

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  5. A pony! When I was little, I prayed fervently, thinking that might work. There was NO REASON we couldn’t have one in our backyard in the city. There was plenty of grass. I set myself up for huge disappointments a few years running. However, I was able to get my daughter riding lessons and she bought herself a horse (with her scholarship money, but that’s another story.)

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  6. Clearly, I’m the high-brow one here… I wanted (and STILL wait for) a Corvette, preferably a Stingray and a Great Dane. I’ve been asking for over forty years. No matter that I couldn’t drive at age 10 or 12, I want that Vette! *sigh* I’ll be rocking in the corner with my coffee… sulking loudly.

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  7. Ellen: My sister had Liddle Kiddles (I remember Bunson Bernie was one), but she ended up chewing the fingers off of all of them….

    Kathy: Are you excited about this summer’s Barbie movie? I am, and I was never even a Barbie fan.

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    1. I really, really wish we could do a group Barbie viewing in a movie theater (not a Barbie one, a real one). Believe it or not, I never had any Barbies. Just Tammy and her little sister Pepper. Apparently my mom thought Barbie was too racy. I had no idea, I just dressed my flat-footed Tammy in her white sneakers, poodle skirt, and shirtdresses. There may have been a Jackie-O styled prom dress. Oh, and she had ice skates. Pepper had a poodle I think.

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  8. Ellen, I still have my Strawberry Kiddle! I’m shocked—SHOCKED, I say—at how many of you searched for xmas gifts! We were told that if anyone searched (and remember, there were 8 of us in a tiny house), all the gifts would disappear. And my parents never blew smoke…we knew it was true. I told my kids the same thing. No surprises ruined around here! My mom had a funny system, though, just in case. She randomly assigned us a number so even if we found the wrapped gifts, it would only have a number on it so we wouldn’t know who it was for. It was always a ridiculous amount of fun when she forgot her system! We’d all just be handed some random gift, then after we opened it, she’d tell us to give it to the real recipient.

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  10. I don’t think that I ever begged for a gift, but when the Sears Christmas catalog came in, my sister and I would go through it and mark everything that we wanted. We usually got something that was on the list. One thing that I really wanted was a French poodle. A neighbor had one and I loved it. 1959 was a good year as I got my Schwinn Hornet bike (which my parents refurbished and gave me for Christmas again in 1981), a dark-haired Barbie (the 2nd one out and I still have her with all of her clothes and Ken came later in 1962 but he hasn’t come out of the closet) and the coveted French poodle! That poodle was a mess as he chewed on everything and would bite you. I named him Frenchie (really creative right?) He lived until he was over 16, but he went from an inside dog to an outside dog. We did not know then how special dogs are like we now know and did not know how to train them. The other day, I was going through some of my father’s papers and found one of my Christmas lists. I need to look at it again as I forgot the date. Anyway, he would fold it up and put it in his shirt pocket along with a lot of papers (his filing cabinet). He has marked on it what he bought and what he couldn’t find or was not getting. That was a cool find. We would never look for our gifts but did, like Jennifer shake them and feel them trying to figure what was in the big beautifully wrapped box or boxes.

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    1. The Sears Christmas catalogue!! “The Wish Book!” OMG, the day that arrived was heaven. And Schwinn bikes. Madeleine, so many memories. And I love that you found one of your dad’s Christmas lists. What a wonderful memory.

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    2. Oh, boy, the SEARS CATALOGUE! How I loved poring over its pages and circling all the things I wanted! I don’t remember ever getting any of them, but simply reading through its pages and imagining was so fun!

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  11. I just remembered another, wildly inappropriate doll moment with my mother. I mentioned how Mom didn’t like Barbies, right? Well, she also had disdain for Ken. Why? He wasn’t anatomically correct. How do I know this? She pulled down his pants AND SHOWED ME. #yearsintherapy

    BTW, she also had a car sanitizer of an elf that WAS anatomically correct. How do I know this? She pulled down HIS pants and that’s how he dangled – literally – from her rearview mirror.

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  12. I had a wonderful Aunt/ Godmother who would ask me what I wanted for Christmas and get it for me. I still cannot believe how lucky I was. One year my request was The Complete Works of Shakespeare. With sonnets. I was 12. I’d been reading it at her house and thought it was pretty great. I still have it and apart from the microscopic print it is still pretty great. I must have asked for more normal stuff most years.

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      1. Never tried to write but my dear Aunt did take me to see one of Shakespeare’s comedies at Stratford, Ontario. Made things clearer. I really enjoyed your latest book with the growing relationship between Celine and Yale.

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  13. One year, I did beg on year for an English racer bicycle, with the curved handlebars — and got it. I was so surprised to find it under the tree! I knew it was Ann expensive gift! I took it outside for a quick ride right after breakfast. My mom reminded me I couldn’t go outside in my pajamas!

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  14. I do not remember asking for anything but I do remember snooping for the gifts. My Mom told me not to look in the box on top of the dresser. So of course I did and what a surprise she had made me a fake fur vest and it had bright pink fur on the outside and it was reversible I could wear the crazy design on the outside. Let us just say I did wear that vest because she made it.

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  15. I love all of these! It’s especially hopeful seeing how many of you saw your parents’ wisdom later in life…it’s hard being a parent who says “no” sometimes.

    I was another girl obsessed with Barbie–I amassed a full trunk of Barbies and clothing/accessories during my childhood. I dreamed of a Barbie Dreamhouse…instead, my parents got me something even more awesome–they commissioned our neighbor to make a huge Barbie house out of wood! It was probably three or four feet tall and fully open on the back. It was just like a dollhouse but bigger so Barbie and all her friends could stand up and move around inside. The attic even opened with hinges and my Mom used little scraps of carpet for the floors. I received it on my 10th birthday and immediately fell in love (and burst into tears of happiness).

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