>Gifts That Keep On.. Well, I’m Not Really Sure What They’re Doing Exactly, Besides Taking Up Space

>One of the great laws of nature goes something like this: All gifts purchased by a grandparent for his/her teenage grandchild are required to be completely ridiculous.

My own grandparents, so spot on in their purchases of a bitchin’ clock radio for my eighth birthday (which I still use today) and a badly-needed electric blanket when I turned 10, inexplicably began sending Tupperware sets and knee-highs from the time I turned 13 onward.

Similarly, my girls, who as pre-adolescents were the recipients of hip Roxy beachwear and porcelain ballerina dolls, now have begun receiving juggling balls, pencil sharpeners and beef jerky from the g-‘rents. Oh. And these.

Notice that these beauties actually have the word Harmonica printed on them just in case, I’m guessing, my girls were under the impression that they had received a pocket comb or crack pipe.

Now that we have a toddler underfoot, these curious little gifts generally end up pilfered by her and stashed away somewhere in her room. The other day, though, my 16-year-old stepdaughter was getting ready for school when she spied an interesting object peeping out from under a pile of school papers. She picked it up and looked at it closely.

Harmonica.

Without thinking, she shoved it in her jeans pocket and continued getting ready.

Later that day, she was walking down the hall on her way to English when she heard a light ‘thwack’ on the ground behind her. Moments later, she felt a tap on her back and turned around. It was a boy. A really cute boy. She smiled.

“Uh, you dropped your harmonica,” he said. She looked behind her. There it was, in the middle of the hallway.

Harmonica.

“Uh,” she said. “Uh…” She didn’t want to pick it up, but she couldn’t let it stay there, either; people were staring. Fortunately, a friend of hers approached. She grabbed her arm.

“Will you get that harmonica for me?” she whispered urgently. Her friend looked at her strangely.

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.” She picked up the harmonica and handed it to 16 who quickly left the scene, crimson faced.

“And then I thought about it,” she told me later, “Why was I so embarrassed? Why not embrace the harmonica? Celebrate the harmonica?”

And so, once she’d finished her English test, 16 made sure she wasn’t being watched and then pulled the harmonica from her jacket pocket. The room was dead silent, her classmates bent over their papers in concentration. Covertly, she put the harmonica to her lips and blew.

The teacher looked up and frowned. “Is that a harmonica?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. The students began giggling and 16’s friend, who was sitting beside her and had seen the harmonicrime go down, began laughing uncontrollably.

“Molly?” the teacher asked, looking at the friend incredulously. “Was that you? Did you bring a harmonica to class?” Molly was laughing too hard to answer. Mercifully, the bell rang before the true culprit could be caught.

Thanks to the willingness of a 16-year-old girl to accept with open arms this gift that was so thoughtfully and carefully chosen for her, who knows where the harmonica will turn up next? Whose lives will it alter? Whose histories will it rewrite?

And on that note, for the first time, I’m feeling an urge to break out that unopened mini-crockpot in the back of the hall closet and embrace it, too.