All I Want for Christmas is a Stegosaurus

Another 12-hour shift. Cindy stopped in the hallway on her way out of the medical center, dropped three coins in and kicked the vending machine dead center with a roundhouse. The bag of Skittles jarred loose and dropped. Josh's favorite candy.

It used to take him twenty minutes to forgive her for being late, but through trial and error, Cindy discovered that a bag of Skittles cut the time in half. Her friends lectured against spoiling him, as though her parenting skills had fled with her husband. They had no clue about a kid whose daddy walked out, or about being moved out of home into a trailer park, or his stay-at-home mommy turning into an exhausted mom who worked too much, or being bullied over ill-fitting, second-hand clothes.

Or how a little boy's heart shatters like a glass Christmas tree ornament.

Four more days until Christmas and Cindy was finally able to shop for Josh. She had scrimped and saved all year to fill up a sandwich bag with small bills. Sixty-three dollars. It was enough to buy the battery operated, five-foot-long, stegosaurus action figure Joshua had ogled on TV. She fondled the baggie in her purse while imagining the delight on his sweet face. "Yeah, All I Want for Christmas...." She sang the song replacing two front teeth with stegosaurus which made the beat go wonky.

Cindy's first stop was The Dollar Store to pick up Josh's stocking stuffers. She found a small tub full of assorted, plastic dinosaurs, a dinosaur coloring book-and her best find-a Triceratops' mask. Shoppers smiled as she sang.

While waiting in the checkout line, Cindy's song morphed into a dinosaur version of the Twelve Days of Christmas. Turtledoves and golden rings became Brontosauruses and Pteranodons. She couldn't wait to hear Josh laugh when she sang it to him after school. She hummed and reached into her purse for the baggie of money. It wasn't there. Heart pounding, she stepped out of line to do a search and spotted a man in a green sweatshirt exiting the store with her baggie in his hand.

She screamed. "Stop Him! He's stolen my son's Christmas!"

The store's security guard, who looked more like Santa's helper, rushed out the door but soon returned, out of breath and empty-handed. "How much was it?"

Cindy stared. It was too much. It was the delight on her little boy's face. She bit the inside of her cheek, rummaged in her purse and found enough change to purchase the stocking stuffers.

The security guard walked her to her car. "I'm real sorry, ma'am."

"Thank you."

"Nah, thank you. Your songs made me feel like Christmas for the first time in a long time."

Driving home, Cindy's gas gauge hit empty. She moaned and fumbled in her purse for the wadded five-dollar bill she kept in a back pocket for emergencies.

"Four dollars on pump 6 and the rest on Skittles."

The cashier stared at her. "Lady, this is a one-hundred-dollar bill."