Christmas, Part 2

One year I was enthralled with a racetrack toy I’d seen on TV. I’d watched as the cars rounded corners at breakneck speed, and knew I had to have one; I don’t know why, I’d never owned a tracked set of any sort, trains or otherwise. I must have harassed my parents about it, because they bought it for me. I have no clue how expensive it was. It couldn’t have been cheap. Christmas morning came, I dug into my gifts, and there it was, that same racetrack set I’d seen on TV. I couldn’t wait to play with it. My father helped me set it up in the rec room. I recall thinking it was much smaller than I thought it would be. There was a controller for each car, with only a speed lever on each. Thumb off, stop, thumb pressed full on, full blast. Simple. We made a trial run, and both tracks, both cars worked. Then I pushed my car to its speed limit and it flew off the track as it rounded its first corner. I reset it and it flew off again. My father’s car went happily round and round, if at a much slower pace. Dad told me to control my speed, but I wanted the cars to fly around the track like they did on the commercial. I thought his track might be better, so we switched. His new car, my old car, went happily round and round, so did mine, until I pushed my lever to the end, and my car hit his, taking both off the track. I was an impatient child, I threw a fit, and stormed away from the set, never to play with it again. I’m thinking I was a bit of a brat. But I did learn an important lesson that day: sometimes commercials do not present things as they truly are.