Punk'd

For the past four years I have picked out one of my students to do something special for at Christmas. This is someone whose families can't afford much or are not living with their parents for some reason or another. I go out and buy them a few presents and get several other families on board as well. This year I had two boys that I really wanted to do something for. The first lives with his grandmother and has never even met his father. A couple of months ago the grandmother said that they would have to move because their landlord had increased their rent. The other boy lives with his father and the mother has been out of the picture since shortly after he was born. He comes to school each day with the same pair of pants, shoes with holes in the toes and the soles, and one of two short-sleeved t-shirts which he alternates every other day. I thought they both deserved a nice Christmas like I had every year growing up. With the help of the other families we were able to collect around twenty gifts for each boy which I thought was amazing.

I delivered the gifts to the first boy's house while he was away and the grandmother instantly started crying. She was so thankful for what we did and pointed to her Christmas tree. Underneath it were only four presents, two for each of her two grandsons. That kind of made my Christmas right there.

I drove over to the next boy's apartment, knocked on the door, and waited for dad to answer. He opened up the door and invited me in. Before I could even explain while I was there, I stepped into the living room and immediately noticed the 51" big screen television stationed in the corner. Um okay. I explained what I was doing there and he responded "Oh great. We can put them under the tree with the rest of the gifts. I've spent almost $350 on him already." It took everything in me to not make up a story about how I had accidentally driven to the wrong student's house. Muttering under my breath I made three trips to the car to retrieve all of the gifts. If you can spend over $300 on Christmas presents for your son surely you can invest in some new shoes or perhaps a coat that has all but one of the buttons still attached. I'll admit that all of the Christmas spirit I had from the last house had completely disappeared. So this is what it feels like to get punk'd.