Twice a year, a book the size of a cinder block would arrive in the mail. The Sears Wish Book. Everything you could ever want was in there, and you could not have any of it unless Christmas was coming.
You would dog-ear pages, circle items with a pen, rank your top choices. The toy section was sacred. You would study it like a college textbook, memorizing prices, comparing features, building arguments for why you needed the Millennium Falcon playset.
My sister and I would fight over who got to look at it first. We wore that catalog out by November. The pages were soft as cloth from being turned so many times.