Not Too Naughty, Not Quite Nice

I am naturally very inquisitive.  I just have to find things out.  It is one reason I was going to be a journalism major in college, if I had only gone to the right school.  This sneakiness really came to the front at Christmas.  Hardly a year went by without me finding out at least some of my presents before I unwrapped them.  I had all the tricks.  Not only would I shake my presents, I knew how to peek under the flaps without greatly disturbing them.  I would even moisten light-colored portions of the wrapping to make it transparent enough to try and see images underneath.  One year, a great aunt had given me a water game, and I later would get the exact same game from a cousin.  I had to feign enjoyment, since I already knew I was getting another one.  My "best" year was 1980.  That year, I could figure out almost every single gift I had under the tree.  I wasn't that careful in hiding the fact, and my mother hid everything until Christmas, even the one I didn't figure out.  How was I supposed to know she had gotten my a giant teddy bear that she got as a special offer with one of her fragrance purchases?  Our house wasn't that big, so there weren't too many places to hide gifts before they were wrapped.  I would sneak around, frequently finding them and sometimes claiming them early as prizes in a successful hunt.  Not always, but I did sometimes play with them.  For instance, I easily found my Super Nintendo game system.  When I was the only one in the house, I took it from its hiding place, got it out of the box, hooked it up to the television, and played the first few levels of  Super Mario World.  I then put everything back before I could be caught.  My mother suspected something, but she couldn't prove anything.  This secretiveness also helped me when I started to buy gifts for my mother, as well.  Once, in the late '90s, on one of my infrequent forays outside of the house, I was just wandering a store, when I found something my mother had been wanting for some time:  a bonnet style hair dryer.  I managed to get it, and a Michael Bolton tape, and hid it in the trunk of my car and put in it so it wouldn't move around to make noise so my mother wouldn't hear it when I went to pick her up.  I managed to slip it into the house and wrap it without anyone knowing.  My mother took awhile to even notice it under the tree.  She was very surprised when she opened it up.  Unfortunately, she rarely had the time to use it, and it was ultimately thrown out years later.  I had a knack for picking good gifts, but my mother doesn't.  When I was in high school, she once got me a sweater I liked, but I couldn't wear because it was the wrong size.  I had tried it on weeks before and had to get a different one instead.  She thought I had grown enough so it could fit.  I hadn't.  She was so certain, she had thrown away the receipt.  Although I would grow a little more (as well as develop some muscle tone), that sweater never did fit me right.  That is one of the reasons why I don't ask her for gifts any more.  She always thinks I would like or need something, but she turns out to be wrong.  Christmas isn't as much fun when you have to ask for an exact gift, and nothing else will do.