Some mentioned now-vintage toys such as Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots ("He knocked my block off!") and Easy Bake Ovens ("Easy bake, easy bake, fast as you can ..."), all of which brought back memories for us more vintage staffers.

Among the most memorable toys in my 1960s pre-adolescence were the aforementioned boxing robots, Mattel's Strange Change Time Machine and Bas•Ket. The Time Machine required super-heating "capsules" in a clear, domed oven as they transformed into creatures and then, when reheated, could be compressed back into capsule form. Bas•Ket was a full-court basketball game in which a ping-pong ball rolled around a lumpy court, falling into holes from where it could be launched via spring-loaded levers toward baskets on either end.

The toys were operated by finger-burning heat and sharp, fingertip-slicing, exposed metal levers. Unlike many of today's overprotective, hovering "helicopter" adults, our parents, when shown our inevitable game injuries, would say, "Well, be more careful," then shrug it off and go about their business.

Now that was effective parenting, imparting a lesson in cause-and-effect, a basic law of physics.

But this little stroll down memory lane sent me to a different side street. As the flood of memories from my very modest childhood Christmases washed over me, I recalled how my mom did the very best she could, raising three boys on her own, my deadbeat "father" leaving behind an until-then housewife with boys, ages 12, 6 and 6 months.

No contact. No financial support. Personna non grata.

I was the youngest. I was an accident. Growing up, I blamed myself for his disappearance.

Starr power

Mom went from being a career mother to an employee, for years working a second, part-time job at night to earn enough to barely make ends meet, relying on the kindness of friends and neighbors to keep an eye on us boys. Often, she would drive home from her day job at Minute Maid — in that era's version of a data processing department — pick me up, and take me with her back to downtown Orlando for her night job at Hall Brothers Insurance, where she would enter the data from the day's business activity and I would ... wait.

I grew up a fan of the Green Bay Packers. The Miami Dolphins had recently begun as an AFL expansion team, so they had not caught my attention just yet. I was a big fan of Packers' quarterback, Bart Starr. All I wanted for Christmas around age 8 was a Bart Starr jersey, No. 15, in Packer green with gold lettering.

In the late-60s, NFL replica jerseys weren't available in athletic apparel stores that didn't exist in malls that weren't yet built, so such merchandise was probably pretty hard to come by, if not impossible, especially in central Florida. Online shopping and overnight shipping had all yet to be invented. The closest thing was the Sears or J.C. Penney catalogs, and they probably didn't sell sports replica apparel.

Ahh, but Santa was magic. Surely he could get his hands on one.

Come Christmas morning, I eagerly ripped through packages the size and shape of something that might contain a jersey. And there it was: the legendary No. 15 — in big, black, pressed-on numbers on the front and back of a red, long-sleeved T-shirt. Across the top of the back were the letters that spelled out the name of my hero.

Shame, illumination

In a box stuffed with old photos, I found a picture of me holding the "jersey" by the sleeves under my chin, looking down at it in obvious disappointment. I didn't really need to see the photo to recall exactly what it looked like. The image is branded into the place in my mind where such memories are stored and frequently, though often involuntarily, retrieved.

My face shows it all. I knew this wasn't Santa's work. Looking back, I believe that's when I succumbed to the reality of that Christmas fantasy.

I don't recall what became of my red-and-black Bart Starr shirt. I probably didn't wear it much, and as a fast-growing boy, I'm sure it soon ended up in a bag of clothes to be donated, was thrown away or unceremoniously cut into dust rags.

But the memory of that moment endures, one that accompanies the comfort in the knowledge that my mom did the absolute very best she could to take care of her three boys. Just four years later, at age 12, I became the "man" of the house, and it was then that I began to recognize that the packages found beneath the tree — ours wrapped in large, white-hot lights and draped with tacky silver icicles — were very hard to come by and should never be taken for granted.

And I've felt ashamed every time the thought of my disappointment with the jersey has resurfaced.

I'm not much for receiving gifts, preferring the excitement in the anticipation of the expression on a loved one's face when a Christmas wish is delivered. My mom was a giver, sacrificing all she could to give me a Strange Change Time Machine, a Bas•Ket game, some boxing robots and a jersey that wasn't exactly what I had hoped for. It's likely that I get that from her, the only parental role model I have ever known.

Someone had frequently told me, in that regard, that I possess some female tendencies. It was meant as criticism. If it's true, I wear it instead as a badge of honor because I know from where those tendencies rise. Mom taught me a lot, and I probably never thanked her appropriately.

So thank you, mother, for the example you set, the sacrifices you made, and a Christmas memory I will never forget.