Here’s my situation. There’s about two months left to go as far as High School goes, then it’s summer break. After that, I go to University for four years, working to achieve my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. So, I told my parents about halfway through the year that I would need a laptop for University, and that I would pay for the majority of it if they could pitch in a couple hundred bucks. To my surprise, they told me that they had already planned on getting me a laptop as a grad gift.

You can probably imagine my elation when I heard this. Since then, I scoured both the Internet and any retail store with laptops for the perfect notebook. Whenever I found one that would suit my needs, my parents always had a reason not to buy it. This confused me, because some of the deals I found were really, really good. Unphased, I continued my quest.

Then, about a week ago, I was looking through the Walmart flyer and I saw a deal, so I slid the newspaper over to my mom. She looked at it for a minute, looked back at my dad, looked at me, and sighed. She told me that my grandparents had already purchased me a laptop at Christmas, and were going to give it to me as a grad present. They wanted to keep it a secret, but to quote her, “We couldn’t think up any more excuses.”.

I was so happy. I had originally hoped that with constant reminding and nagging, I may be able to secure one before grad, but the thought that a laptop is sitting at my grandparent’s abode, silent and waiting for the day it’s introduced to me is enough to keep my technology-lusting wants at bay.

Now here’s the thorn on the beautiful, portable computing, dual core processing rose. Every time my grandparents come in to visit (which is fairly often), there’s a part of me that thinks, hopes, prays that they will surprise me and give it to me early. It hasn’t happened yet, and probably won’t happen until the day of grad, but I can’t help but hope that the next time they come in they’ll greet me with more than a kiss and a ‘You’re growing like a weed!” comment.