Tenth Avenue North – Christmas Time Machine

CCM: What’s the greatest Christmas gift that you’ve personally received that you can remember?
MD: I can tell you the greatest Christmas gift that I ever gave… I gave our dog Sam the gift of life!

I was a freshman in high school, maybe a sophomore. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. We ate at the food pantry. There were five kids. My dad worked for a non-profit called National Rights Of Life in DC. My mom worked at the private Christian school, so we all got free tuition to go. Anyway, we didn’t have a lot of money. A couple of weeks before Christmas, my dad came to us and said, “Well, our dog Sam got hit by a car right outside our house.” Really tragic. He said, “Kids, we have enough money to either pay for this surgery to save Sam’s life, or buy you Christmas presents…”

…I got a new Nintendo that year… Just kidding!

As a family, we elected to forgo presents and save Sam’s life. Sam went on to live another eight or nine years after that.

When I was around thirteen I got a CD/boombox. My very first record, of course, was Boyz II Men Cooleyhighharmony.

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