Short Lived Christmas Presents

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Capt Worley PE

Run silent, run deep
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When he was about 6, my grandmother got my cousin one of those helicopter toys where you pull the string and it takes off.

He opened the present, yelled, "Cool!" and gave the ripcord a mighty yank. The helicopter went straight up into the ceiling and exploded into about 100 peices. Elapsed time: 2 seconds after removal from the package.

 
Before my time, my older (and middle) brother got a play telephone booth (cardboard type material). Not long after it was set up in his room, he and my oldest brother got on the top bunk of his bed and jumped on it. The poor booth never had a chance.

 
when I was a kid I got an electric model plane. It was styrofoam and you put these program disks in it and let it fly a pattern. wingspan was a couple of feet. The first day I got it, I took it to an open field and let it go. It promptly soared about 50ft up into a tall pine tree and got stuck. oh well.

The kids and I built an Estes model rocket. Took it to the field next to the high school for launch. Beautiful shot. chute opened fine, slowly drifted right onto the roof of the school. oh well.

 
When I was about 12/13 my youngest brother opened a christmas present my grandmother gave him.....a small horse that she knitted. He promptly threw it across the room and yelled, I don't want this crap! I can't ever remember being any more embarrased about being related to someone in my life. Ironically, If he had that today, it would be about the only thing he owned.

 
When I was a kid I got a control line airplane (the type where you stand in the center of the circle and control the plane via a radial wire). I never got to fly it. I think my uncle was flying it ("showing me how it works") when it did an arc straight up, and then straight down, and exploded in to pieces on impact.

These days we just resort to a tacky gift at Christmas, usually for my sister or my parents (a gag gift). The gorilla that played the Macarena was a big hit. The glow in the dark solar rechargeable fake Alligator head was another. Chia pets always work in this regards as well. We look forward to my younger sister having her first baby soon, we're going to get her the most obnoxious, noisiest, battery-eating toy we can find. Payback.

 
In a similar vein, I got a remote controlled airplane. I spent all morning putting it together, and my dad and I went to the golf course to try it out. We had it on the tailgate of my dad's truck (I was 11 or so), and he was putting the fuel in it for me. This random stray yellow lab comes up to us. Being a "dog person", of course I pet on the dog. The dog then immediately hops into the back of the truck and right onto my airplane. Not totally destroyed, but destroyed beyond repair.

Never saw the lab again after that, and never liked dogs since. This incident is the reason I chuckled when I heard about Michael Vick.*

*Not really. I still like dogs.

 
This is not a Christmas story but holiday- and dog-related.

Grandparents came to visit us for Easter and we all went to church together. We got back home and granny told us to look for the candies that she had hidden around the house. We started looking and looking and looking but couldn't find any. Turned out her little poodle dog had found them all while we were at church. Wow, that dog got sick... and they could not take it to the vet because they were all closed on Easter. Dog managed to pull through though. :doganim:

 
Dogs are good at that. I put my dog (yellow lab) in the garage during a cold spell. Turns out I'd forgotten about the new full bag of strawberry tootsie rolls in the garage. He ate the entire bag, wrappers and all. As soon as this was noticed (not long after the deed), I kicked him back outside.

A little while after being kicked outside, he yakked up a big pile of nasty strawberry tootsie roll wrappers. Probably one of the more disgusting things I've ever had to clean up...

He became a permanent outside dog after eating the wife's birthday cake (which was on a kitchen counter). Before that, he ate a box of Christmas chocolates, a loaf of bread, the garbage (a few times), and was never far away from the baby's high chair during dinner. Birthday cake sealed the deal though.

 
I was a huge lego fan as a kid (who wasnt right?) and one year my parents bought me a huge lego train set. Several of my aunts and uncles spent all Christmas day helping me build it. Within 48 hours my 2 year old brother went Godzilla on it. If you listen very very closely, you can still here the sounds of 7 year old FW crying....

I still have the lego train set in a box in my basement. Im not sure how Im going to get revenge for that train, but I will. And when I do, it will be ever so sweet....

 
A little while after being kicked outside, he yakked up a big pile of nasty strawberry tootsie roll wrappers. Probably one of the more disgusting things I've ever had to clean up...
My one dog puking up the other dog's turd that she ate all over the cream colored carpet is #1 on my grossness dog puke list.

I got a RC car one year and was going to town with it for about 10 minutes when I drove it under an end table and snapped the antennae off. My mom filled out a replacement part order from that came with the kit and and send it right in to the company the next day. I was 9 at the time. A few months back I was cleaning out the old toy/jigsaw puzzle/board game closet at their house when I found the order form sitting there on a shelf. I'm 30 now.

Thanks Mom!

 
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While in college for xmas one yr I got a sony discman that came with Really nice headphones. I used it for the first time as I went to sleep Christmas night. When I got up in the morning, the lab puppy my parents had gotten that fall had chewed through cord and cushion on the headphone.

 
anything lego's, we buy them and then 4 days later there an expensive pile of ****, were putting a moratorium on them this year..

 
Although not a present, the first year we put up the tree in our new house, as a newly married couple, with 9 month old kitten (abandoned under our house by whore mama cat), the ornaments all busted. Let me explain. I put the tree up the day after Thanksgiving (like I always do). The cat got curious. I kept putting up my purple and gold ornaments (cheap and glass, btw) not thinking about the future. That night... CRASH!!!... the tree was down, glass was everywhere, and there was a kitten scared shitless hiding in the laundry room. Dumb cuss thought he could climb the tree.

I do not like that cat.

 
I had to comment here due to the timing of it.

About a month ago, I rediscovered my shortest lived Christmas gift. It wasn't destroyed however, just put away. My son is enjoying it a lot more than I did. Of course, I was twelve and he is four. At any rate, when I was 12, I got the one gift that I had been asking for for months. It was my euqivalent to the Red Rider B-B gun. I was intoxicated by its commercials that I had been seeing for what seemed a lifetime, and I just had to have it. It was the 9.6V Tyco Typhoon Hovercraft. It was awesome, or so I thought.

The minute I removed it from its wrapping, I took it from its box and raced out into the cold. Nothing happened, the battery needed to charged. So, four hours later, the battery was finally good to go, so I headed back out. Then, I was hit with the first dissapointment. In the t.v. adds, this thing seemed to go about 100 mph. In reality, it was more like a snail. Second disappointment. For some reason, probably the commercials, I figured the thing would turn on a dime. Again, not the case, but I should have known better being that it is fan operated. The third and final dissapointment. The battery keeps its charge for about 10 minutes. That's right 10 minutes of lack luster performance followed by a 4 hour wait.

I took the f'ing thing back in the house and put it in a corner. My dad got it out a couple times shortly there after to show his friends, but I never played with it again, until about a month ago. I discovered that I never got over the dissapointment of it all, and still carry a great deal of resentment for the Tyco corporation.

 
This one was great until the stupid neighbor tipped the Feds off..

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