Dear Santa,

            Do you remember that Christmas when you received an extra long letter from me? It was six pages of notebook paper, filled back-to-back. I had worked on that Christmas list for a year. I’m sure you remember it because I was probably the only kid crazy enough to spend a whole year writing to you.

            Well, I found it again. Actually, Mama found it, laughed over it, showed it to Papa so that he could laugh over it, and then gave it to me after getting sick of laughing over it. I was going to feel a little offended that they could laugh over a little girl’s childish desires, but as I read it, I had to laugh at it myself.

            After all, who in her right mind would want 101 colors of neon pentel pen? I guess I would, after sitting with friends who always had more pentel pens than I did. I also asked you for a ballpen that writes in 200 colors because Mama and Papa always refused to buy me that fat red ballpen that wrote in 30 colors. They just didn’t understand how cool it was to write one sentence in brown-light blue-yellow-lime green-pink-orange-red. Everyone was doing that, except me.

            Maybe I felt that if I couldn’t have the fat red ballpen, the next best thing would be to have Fern Gully ballpens, Beauty and the Beast ballpens, and Little Mermaid ballpens. Since none of the above could be found in the stores yet, I was sure to be the envy of everybody else because you would magically conjur up those ballpen sets especially for me, in addition to the non-sharpening pencils, erasers, jackets, key chains, autograph books, and calendars that I also asked for.

            I also asked you for eleven sets of jackstones because I was never really good at the game. Everyone else was always beating me at jackstones, and I was even more hopeless at playing Chinese jackstones (which is why I also asked for six sets of Chinese jackstones). Maybe having eleven sets of jackstones and six sets of Chinese jackstones to practice with would solve the problem.

            I don’t think it ever occurred to me that maybe I was spending too much time reading instead of playing jackstones. But I’m sure that thought crossed your mind when I asked for Baby-Sitters Club autographed photos, not to mention the long list of books that took up two pages. I’m surprised you didn’t leave me a note and point me in the direction of the bookstore.

            And what did you think of the more impossible requests, like number 28: “For Danjun to learn how to read”, and number 34: “High grades”? Hey, but you have to give me some credit. At least I also asked for a whole box of SRA (number 71) and a typewriter (not electrical, number 80), both of which would have helped me achieve request number 34.

            I read the rest of the list –which was filled with more requests of non-sharpening pencils, a mini trashcan, three tubes of liquid paper, a couple of game-and-watch that I’m sure weren’t in the market, 1000 colors of Crayola, and my own telephone with phone number 6455161— with much amusement, but I also felt strangely nostalgic.

            You want to know what possessed me to write you that year-long letter? It was because I thought you were magic. I thought that it was the only way to explain how you could make all the kids in the world happy with new toys, and how you could give out all those toys in one night. Magic. So with a wave of your hand or a snap of your fingers, I thought that you could give me all of the 124 items on my list.

            And now, thirteen years later, I find myself wishing that I still believed you were a true magical being that could make everything alright. Because now, I would ask you for things like world peace, the end to world hunger, a stop to corruption. I would ask you to find a way for neighbors to look out for each other, a way to make families happy despite all the imperfections, a way for friendships to survive through generations, a way for love to last lifetimes.

            But it would be wrong for me to ask all that of you, Santa. Because, no offense, you’re not the right person to ask.

            I should be asking God.

            And maybe, I should also be asking myself just how to make all that a reality, sans magic.