Originally published by The River City Review inside the West Sacramento News-Ledger in 2001. Publication date estimated as the actual date is unknown.

My fondest Christmas memory is a hard subject because every year I have been at a different location or with a different person. My parents were divorced when I was about five and I have had Christmas at different places each year.

Last year my mom was forced to work on Christmas day and my sister and I had to stay with the presents taunting us as they lay under the Christmas tree. When she and my dad (he had picked her up from work) finally got there, we got to open our presents and I got one of the coolest presents ever an AIWA CD Player. I’d wanted a portable CD player since I was eight, which was when I started collecting CDs. I was so excited that I listened to it for about five days straight. I had to stop eventually though, because the batteries died and I had to replace them. That may not be my fondest memory but it was definitely something I will remember for a while.

Although I got a very cool present last year, I am looking forward to my present for this year. I have been pretty much begging my mom and dad to get me a Sony Playstation 2 because I want to get the newest WWF game, “Smackdown! Just Bring It.”

Editor’s Note: The Review is a high school publication at River City High School in West Sacramento, Calif., for which Daniel Wilson wrote and edited between 2000-2004. The stories published in this category appear in their original form with the only corrections being removal of hyphens for line breaks and the fixing of typos.