CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE: MAKIN' A LIST AND CHECKIN' IT TWICE FOR OVERSIGHTS

It's not even Thanksgiving yet, and I'm past the halfway point on my Christmas shopping.

I can't help but gloat. It's like getting your income tax returns mailed in by Jan. 31. You're entitled to feel a certain moral superiority.

I ventured into the mall over the weekend, where my favorite department store was having its biggest sale of the year.

I waded into the fray, well-armed with checkbook and plastic, and after the whole thing was over and I was left bloodied and bruised and clutching several shopping bags, I realized that it's probably a good thing I never wanted to be a war correspondent. I wouldn't last half an hour.

I'm lucky. I don't have to worry about not finding the right action figure and having my second-grader branded a geek with no redeeming social qualities by his or her classmates.

The cat really won't care if her catnip mouse is wearing the wrong color suit. But, like most 2-year-olds, she will have it in pieces before all the wrapping paper's picked up Christmas afternoon.

I think everyone has a "What I Didn't Get for Christmas" story, recalling days when only the perfect toy or brand-name piece of clothing under the tree would guarantee peace on earth, at least at their house.

When I was 7, the only thing I asked for was The Doll. Every girl in my class wanted The Doll. You cranked her arm up and down and her facial expressions changed. She smiled, she laughed, she gave that sweet, baby-doll smirk. She cried. She also ate and wet and did all that other stuff.

Christmas morning came, and I got an Etch-A-Sketch, a real porcelain tea set and an absolutely gorgeous carriage for all my other dolls, but The Doll was nowhere to be found.

"Maybe Santa ran out of them," my older sister tried to console me.

When school started again after the holiday break, there was my childhood nemesis, Debbie, with her very own The Doll, all spiffed up for show and tell.

"What did you get for Christmas?" she asked, smirking.

Actually, now that I think about it, Debbie and The Doll looked a lot alike.

A few nights later, my parents came home from grocery shopping, bearing a large gift-wrapped box. I was upstairs putting on my PJs when my brother bellowed for me to come down NOW!

Pop handed me the package. "We ran into Santa at the store," he told me. "He said he's very sorry, but the shipment didn't come in on time and the elves couldn't get all the orders done."

It was The Doll, of course.

I played with that doll every day for months, neglecting all my other dolls until one night I noticed her sitting on the shelf with a godawful expression on her little plastic face.

She was supposed to be smiling, but the way the moonlight played over her face, she looked a lot like Jack Nicholson after he chops down that door in "The Shining."

Of course, I was the kind of kid who was pretty much convinced that not only did my toys come to life after I'd gone to sleep, but they all got together and talked about how much they hated me.

So The Doll was banished to dolly purgatory, stuck in the toy box with her face to the wall.

Now, of course, I'm happy that not only was someone nice enough to give me a present, but they saved the receipt so I can exchange it for something I actually like.

And let's face it: I can't afford the insurance on a Corvette, and Antonio Banderas would be awfully hard to wrap.

Hey, it's the thought that counts.

~Peggy O'Farrell is a copy editor for the Southeast Missourian.