My Christmas memory

Staying up was never one of the things that I could do when I was a little kid, but that day was different-I had to stay up because it was Christmas Eve and Christmas day was only a few hours away. 1

My name is Bobby Lor. I’m 16 right now. I’m short, I’m small, and I’m a Hmong American. I like reminiscing about the days back when I was a kid, especially Christmas days. With a family of four brothers and five sisters we never really had much when I was growing up, also because my parents were immigrants. My mom would work and make as much as I do at my current job which was about $6.55 an hour. She worked full time, while my dad stayed home and tried to find jobs around the neighborhood. He would go out to this one lady’s garden and keep the garden all neat and tidy. Then he would come back with loads of mosquito bites and a ton of bee stings. He didn’t make much from that though. My older brothers and sisters work at McDonalds and Burger King. We made just enough to keep the family on its own two feet so we just lived with what we had. Even though we barely had enough money we were still able to celebrate Christmas. I remember this certain Christmas Eve the most when I was younger, because it was the first Christmas Eve and Christmas that I can remember with my family.2

This Christmas Eve morning was darker and quieter than usual. I was awoken by the scraping sound of my parent’s shovel by my window. I looked out the window and saw that the snow was miles high. Exited, I jump out of my bed and went straight outside after getting ready. Immediately, I grabbed a shovel and helped them. Well, I couldn’t really help them, considering my miniature size; nevertheless I did the best I could. We only had to shovel the sidewalk so it didn’t take long to finish, especially with the help of my other siblings. After we were done shoveling, my mom and dad went back inside to rest. Everyone who helped stood with silence looking with awe at our achievement. The silence was then broken with a shovel digging into the snow. A loud “Think fast!” came immediately after. With seconds to react my brother, Nhia, was shot down with a pile of snow. With that we started an all out war with snow balls. We caused chaos. My brother Kou would always scream out “Think Fast” with a shovel full of snow and throw a shower of snow at us, and yes, he was the one who started it. We all ducked for cover behind anything we could find, as if we were being pinned downed by aliens with laser powered weapons.3

“Run around the house and get them from behind!” yelled Kong, my eldest brother. He is a very smart and nice guy. He helps out a lot around the house since he is the oldest. In short he’s an awesome brother.4

I ran around the house as quickly as possible and when I got around I was plowed down with snow. My second oldest brother, Kou, was waiting for me. Kou is more of a car person. He helps out a lot with the family too. He’s also a pretty short-tempered guy, but that’s what makes him, him. He’s a good brother.5

As I crawled my way up through the piles of snow I was buried under, my third oldest brother, Nhia threw a snowball at Kou with a loud “AYAAA!”I don’t think it really fazed him, but it was a hit. Now for Nhia, he is more of the quiet type I guess you could say. He’s a gamer and a computer guy. He’s a fun brother.6

As I got up I heard “Take this!” then saw my brother Kong running past me. It was my fourth oldest brother, John, yelling and throwing a hail of snowballs. John is more of a sports person then any of us five brothers, which makes him a cool brother to have.7

Then there was me, the fifth oldest of the brothers, I was also the youngest of the family, my aiming was awful. I couldn’t even hit a stationary object at point blank if I wanted to. Of course, now that I’m older I could hit a moving bird with a snowball a mile away, with my glasses on, that is.8

After a few minutes of snowball fighting my mom and dad came out and started lecturing us about how the neighbors would start to hate us if we keep being this loud. Then they started talking about other things and it went on and on and on. We ended up shoveling the sidewalk again. However, it was still fun having that awesome snowball fight. We finally went back inside and had some breakfast: steamy rice, warm chicken, and some delicious veggies. 9

I had three presents if I remember correctly. They were from my parents, my siblings, and the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army donates some presents to us every now and then during Christmas season. It was really nice of them to do that since we barely had enough to celebrate Christmas. I spent most of my afternoon begging my parents to let me open my presents early since Christmas was only one night away. They obviously said no. Despite what they said I still kept trying to peek. I would be all sneaky and hide behind furniture and when I was close enough I would do a baseball slide to my present then lay low. It was as if the presents wanted me to open them. They were calling to me “Open me! Open me!” I would slowly lift the tape off the wrapping paper, until I could see what was inside. I was so paranoid about being discovered that every little noise I heard I immediately stopped and lifted my head up and looked around. Eventually that paranoid feeling of mine would stop me from seeing what was inside. I ended up watching some television for the remainder of my afternoon. The shows were alright even though I had no clue what they were saying. I ended up putting in some Power Ranger movie that we had. It was way back when the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers were still alive. As for dinner, my family didn’t do any fancy Christmas feast or anything of that sort. We didn’t even have candy canes at that time either. All we had for Christmas was food that we ate everyday like rice, noodles, chicken, beef, pork, and lots of veggies. It was still a blast though. So you could say every day is a special day for my family and me.10

At about ten o’clock at night, everyone was asleep except my siblings and me. All the lights in the house were off except for the Christmas tree lights. The silent house and the Christmas lights gave off this weird feeling which somehow fed our excitement for what was to come in a few hours. We were so excited that we wrapped little things that we found around the house with paper and give them to each other. I would wrap my Pokémon cards with some wrapping paper and give them to my brothers as a present. Besides, I was going to get it back from them anyways because I didn’t feel like losing my Pokémon cards yet. Our Christmas tree was not really all that elegant and flamboyant; it was more of a plain tree with little lights and a few ornaments. I took off my favorite Christmas ornament from the Christmas tree and played around with it. It was the best Christmas ornament ever, at least I thought so. I was really small, it was a little toaster with fake toast in it and had two little cartoon mice on the side the toaster. You could pop the toast up when you pushed down the mice and I would do this continuously. We played and played till we couldn’t play anymore. Soon enough, I was on the couch about to fall asleep. I constantly talked to my siblings trying to keep myself awake, but it was no use. So in the end, I was left dreaming about Christmas’ wonders. 11