Christmas magic

This afternoon, downtown Seattle was dark and gloomy. No longer freezing, as it's been for the last fortnight, but not much warmer. A typical Seattle drizzle -- wet enough to keep me damp, but not enough to make me run for cover or -- God forbid -- use an umbrella.

I was a man on a mission -- trying to find a Christmas present for the most recent addition to the family. My mission led me deep into Pioneer Square, the area where Seattle all began. An odd district of old stone buildings, none over about three stories high. At Christmas, huddled in the gloom of winter, their exteriors forbidding but lit up warmly from within, it all felt very much like the London of Charles Dickens.

A rusticated stone building contained what appeared -- from the outside -- to be a small toy store. I entered. I was delighted. Although the street entrance was unimpressive and easy to miss, once inside I found myself wandering about in a magic world of children's toys, a maze of small rooms, each brightly lit, with a hidden stairway near the rear leading down to an even richer offering of toys on a lower level.

I looked about me, half expecting to see the jolly toymaker himself, hard at work at his craft.

And the toys were wonderful. Not the kind of toys you see advertised on kids' TV shows. These were the kinds of toys you see in photos from yesteryear. Only better. A whole room of jigsaw puzzles in various shapes and sizes. A room of stuffed animals, from baby teddy bears to giagantic giraffes. Stacks of hardwood blocks and building toys. An entire corner, its shelves filled with wonderful chemistry sets (the best of which was priced at a pricey $269!), telescopes, microscopes, and other encouragements for the young scientist. Games of all types, from this year's most advertised models all the way back to classics such as Risk and Monopoly. Miniature toy cars and trucks --sturdily built from cast metal (not plastic!).

Adding to the magic -- or to the confusion, which may be the same thing -- were plastic balls, balls the size of croquet balls, rolling around the store underfoot, rolling under their own power, untended, changing direction each time they hit an obstacle -- such as my feet. They must have contained batteries and some internal mechanism that made them roll, but the effect on the unsuspecting visitor, already transfixed by the magic of the toys of Christmas, was unnervingly Hogswartian.

This is a child's Christmas as it should be presented, I felt. These are the kinds of presents I want to give. Heck, these are the kinds of presents I want to receive. Does Santa know?

I stumbled, intoxicated, out of the little shop, out into the gloomy, Dickensian drizzle. Now at home, sober, I look back on it all and mull over the cruel reality -- I'll probably get a tie for Christmas.