December 1975, Indianola, Iowa

By Mark Cloud

It was the winter of my discontent. I was but a lad, a young 12, and far too impressionable to suffer the cruel twist of fate that awaited me. A fate that scars me to this day. For that was the year I got the worst Christmas present ever.

Now the gift itself - standing alone, floating in a void, considered in a vacuum - was not that bad. It was an air hockey table that, under different circumstances, I would have been excited to get. In fact, over the years I’ve received many other gifts - the underwear that didn’t fit, the leaden fruitcake, the umbrella (a freakin’ umbrella!) - that were, on their face, less appealing than an air hockey table. But what Christmas 1975 taught me is that it’s the context, more than anything, that renders a gift unbearable.

You see, in 1975 there was only one gift that mattered. It was the holy grail of gifts. It was the thing that all of us boys, weaned on The Jetsons and Johnny Quest and Star Trek, dreamed of finding under the tree on Christmas morning. It was a bit of the auto-techno-roboto-fied future that could be dropped right on to the shag carpet of our fondue-pot-infested split-level homes. It was a video game that you could … gulp! … actually play on your TV! It was … Pong!

In today’s Xbox world, the back-and-forth simplicity of Pong may seem crude. But back in the mid-’70s, before cable TV and computers and cell phones, back when the Captain & Tenille ruled the Top 40 charts, it was a mind-boggling concept, this idea that you could hook something up to your clunky old Zenith and control the images on the screen.

With Pong, you were no longer a mere observer, you instead became part of the TV. Sure, it wasn’t a jet-pack like Dr. Quest and Race Bannon wore, but in some little way it seemed to connect you to the future.

For weeks leading up to that Christmas, I begged my mother for Pong and made wild promises. I’d make my bed every morning, I’d clean the dishes after dinner every night, I’d stop making crank calls to the junior-high shop teacher. I’d do it all if she’d just get me Pong.

I knew it was a longshot. The thing was expensive and her Christmas gifts tended toward the practical. Flannel shirts, new jeans, umbrellas (freakin’ umbrellas!). Still, I held out hope because my mom never flat-out refused my Pong pleas.

On Christmas morning I got up early and made my bed. Then I poked at the gifts under the tree and picked up one with my name on it. I didn’t quite shake it, but just sort of gently moved it from side-to-side, then up-and-down. I’m not sure what I expected to divine from these delicate motions, but by God it felt like it could be Pong.

The very thought that Pong could be in there threw me into sort of a fugue state, so I don’t recall a lot of what happened over the next hour or so. But finally everyone was up and the moment came and I ripped off the wrapping.

Suddenly everything was quiet; no one moved. I felt like I was in a colored picture and their black-and-white frozen faces were watching me. On my knees, I held it up with two hands and just stared at the beautiful box.

Then I let out a yelp of joy and ran around hugging everyone, even some bearded guy named Leroy who was a step-cousin or something of my sister’s husband. I’m not sure why he was there, but it didn’t matter. As far as I was concerned, the cosmos were perfectly aligned.

Anyway, I got the thing hooked up to the TV, and it was everything I had imagined. I spent hours fiddling with the knobs that controlled the vertical-line paddles that hit the little white-dot ball back and forth across the black screen. I played my left hand versus my right, I played every adult and child in the house, and when my best friend came by we played game after game after game. It was the single best gift I had ever gotten.

And then disaster. It came in the form of someone whom, for the sake of privacy, I shan’t name, but will refer to only as MY STUPID BROTHER AL. He was on break from law school and proceeded to inform our mother that he’d read somewhere that Pong could ruin your TV. “Slander!” I cried. “Defamation!” I wailed. But to no avail. Using his lawlerly tricks, he ultimately convinced my mother that if we didn’t immediately unhook the thing the TV would explode and engulf the house in flames. Or worse.

So my Pong was hastily boxed up, returned to Sears, and eventually replaced by that damnable air hockey table. It was the lamest, stupidest, most wretched thing I’d ever seen. I was no longer speeding toward the jet-packed future, I was vaulting back in time. At this rate, I figured, the next Christmas I’d get a pogo stick.

For days I pouted and defiantly refused to open my new gift. Eventually, though, I relented and even came to sort of enjoy air hockey, mainly because I’d envision my STUPID BROTHER AL’S face on the puck as I whacked it and screamed, “LAWYER!”

Of course, I’ve outgrown that now. And I sure hope my dear brother once again enjoys the same heartfelt gift I’ve gotten him for 31 straight Christmases: a freakin’ umbrella.

Mark Cloud is not into yoga and has half a brain. His first story in Common Ties was Assembly Required.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Monday, December 18th, 2006 | Email This Post

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