It was a plastic car dashboard priced at $19.95, surely beyond my parent’s 1960’s budget.  I’d look at it (wait, “look” is too mild.)  I would admire it at the grocery store while it teased me on the top shelve as I received my mother’s order of a 1/2 pound of the “good ground beef.”  (At 60 years old I still don’t know why my mother chose “good” for us.  Was she originally planning on the “bad” and then changed her mind?)

The butcher would even comment to me at that ripe age what a great toy it would be for me.  It was bright, shiny and had all the makings of a car’s dashboard except, of course what was not invented yet (like navigation, CD, cassettes, warming seats, heated steering wheel and climate control for both driver and passenger  – but I digress.)

I never received it as one of our family’s “big” Christmas gift.  One of the five of us would receive the “big gift each year.  Only one.  That year I thought that it was me but the “big” that year went to another.  I didn’t mind.

I have found that what we don’t receive we often do receive.  It is always all around us and it is for us for the taking.  We only need to look and see.  Did I mention that it doesn’t count $19.95?  It’s free.