The best gift I ever got ....

As a fairly indecisive person, picking a favorite anything is never an easy task for me. With the exception of favorite movie (Love, Actually of course!), I can barely name my top 3, let alone all-time favorite. So when Janelle asked us to choose our all-time favorite Christmas gift, she was greeted by a blank stare coming from my direction on the other side of her desk. Choosing my favorite Christmas gift ever received seemed, at first, like an impossible task. Sure, I’ve gotten some cool, exciting gifts throughout my 23 years. There was the karaoke machine when I was in elementary school (which I’m sure my mother eventually regretted), new Mission hockey skates back when I played ice hockey (yes, I’m serious), a Sega Genesis, even my GPS!  Still, nothing jumped out in my memory as a clear-cut winner. So, I’m afraid I have to take the boring route and go with the gift that, as I recall, made me the most excited at the time, and which I ended up getting the most use out of: my first computer. It was the Christmas of 2001. I was in ninth grade at the time, and the closest thing I had ever had to a modern-day computer was an old school Apple word processor (its only known function being the ability to play a wicked Carmen Sandiego game-on floppy disk, of course). After months of hint dropping, and down-right begging at times, I found a spankin’ new Hewlett Packard computer wrapped and waiting for me in the garage of my grandparents’ house. Sure, it wasn’t a quirky, unique or inventive gift, but it was something that I truly wanted, and one that would eventually save me from having to rely on library memberships or staying after school for internet access. Having my first computer pretty much brought me into the 21st century, technologically speaking. Who knows, if it wasn’t for that old, now non-functioning HP, I might not even know what a blog is today! —Rebecca Gregg, intern