A Christmas Memory

Today I went to buy one of the (very) few Christmas presents on my shopping list, for my godson who's 4. I was going to drop it off at his dad's working place so it had to be wrapped right away.

The wrapping service was available from noon and it was 10 am, so I got to wrap the present myself. I always prefer to do it myself anyway. As I was adding a few finishing touches, an elderly woman came there to organise her shopping bags and said "what a lovely present you have wrapped". I thanked her and explained that when I was young, I worked in a department store, at the kitchen department, just before Christmas. "Oh, that's why. I can really see that you know how to do that", the lady said.

The chat, although brief, returned those two weeks in my mind instantly. Those days, 9th graders did two weeks of what was called "introduction to working life" in a working place of their choosing.

I don't know why I chose a department store. If anything terrifies me it's having to sell stuff to people. Probably I just went where all my friends went, plus that department store was very happening in the 80's, and I didn't have a clue of what I wanted to do after high school anyway so it didn't really matter (some kids were clever enough to choose a place close to their dream job, because they had one).

Back then there was a popular quiz show in the TV called "Ruutuysi". Before Christmas, the department store organized an event and they got the presenter from the show to host it. Every
hour, on the hour, he would visit one department with his microphone, make short interviews and promote whatever was sold at that department.

Mind you, I was 15, and in average, at that age you're way more embarrassed about things than you should be - and more so than other people around you. So I was mortified when the host approached my counter just as I was trying to wrap a huge, impossibly-shaped frying pan (now who buys frying pans for Christmas?!). I had a nametag on my chest (see how the elements of embarrassment keep piling up?) and it said "trainee Anna". The presenter (his name is Jorma Pulkkinen, some Finnish people might remember him) had chosen me as his victim and said to his microphone: "and trainee Anna is wrapping a lovely present here..." "I'm really not", I said, as the microphone was pushed in front of me.

Thank goodness I'm better with receiving compliments these days. And thanks to those two weeks, frying pans and other funnily-shaped objects, I'm now very good at wrapping. It sounds like a lesser skill, but it comes in very handy sometimes.

With this story I would like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas, with one more beautiful memory to think about afterwards!