The Tale of My Lost Christmas Present

Back in August this year, when we were in Kuala Lumpur, we stopped by Ikea for a quick look around. While at Ikea, I spotted an adorable little turquoise table/cart on clearance for a good price, and suggested to my parents that it would make a great Christmas present for me (our trip to KL had earlier been declared prime Christmas shopping time, due to the brands/stores that are available there).

However, on that day, Ikea was packed to the brim, and we didn't want to wait in long lines to buy one thing, so they said they'd put it on the list for an upcoming trip when they'd stop at Ikea again.

I looked forward to receiving my cute table at Christmas and nothing more was said about it for the time being. In November, when Christmas shopping season was in full swing, Mom was complaining that she couldn't think of anything great to buy for me--and I said, "You already got me the table! Don't worry about it!"

And Mom said, "What table?"

And then I got worried.

I reminded her about the cutest turquoise table my eyes had ever seen and she remembered it, but then she said, "Actually...I'm pretty sure that later, when we went back to get it...they didn't have turquoise in stock, and we weren't able to buy it."

"What? Really? Wouldn't I have known about it if that happened?" I asked. "I really, really thought you went back and bought it."

Mom couldn't remember buying the table, but she didn't entirely rule it out, either. However, she then asked, "If we bought the table...where is it?"

That stumped us. Our apartments are not very big...it wouldn't be that easy to hide a large, heavy box containing a metal cart somewhere in our little apartments so that no one in the family could find it.

Eventually, we decided that the table must never have gotten purchased, and I was a bit sad about the loss of the table I'd been looking forward to...but oh well! Such things happen.

.........................

Then, January came. And I took it upon myself to clean out our guest bedroom, which had been in sad shape since July, when we had water leaking from the roof into our storeroom and we had to take everything out of the storeroom and put it in the guest bedroom. It had taken months for the leaking in the storeroom to be resolved, but now that the ceiling no longer leaked, I wanted to put everything back where it was supposed to go.

And what did I find at the bottom of a pile of large suitcases? A large, heavy cardboard box with a turquoise sticker on the side of it!!!

How....how...how...did my Christmas Ikea table, the one I fell in love with in August, find itself hidden under a pile of suitcases that were stashed in the guestroom in July?

I have no idea. Nobody seems to be able to remember hiding it there. Someone must have at some point, maybe they didn't know what it was, or maybe they simply forgot about it in the intervening months.

At this point I don't care how, because I got the cutest Christmas present in January and now my little rolling nightstand adorns my bedroom and waits to be filled with accessories and craft supplies and any little thing I want. I told Angel the table's all mine, but I cleaned out a drawer in the dresser for him to use, so it's all fair, right?

So...it's true, you never know what you might find when you are cleaning. You might even find a lost Christmas present to yourself from your parents that your mom doesn't remember buying for you.