The Cabbage Patch Kid Christmas Caper

Rachel asked about the Cabbage Patch Kid story that I alluded to in a post earlier this month when I was talking about my dad. Since it is just before Christmas, and there is nothing new to report about the adoption, and, most importantly, since she asked, I am going to share the story.

Picture it: Christmas, 1984. I am in fourth grade. Like every kid in the world, I desperately wanted a cabbage patch kid for Christmas. Of course, these days you can walk into any walmart or target or toys r us and buy a Cabbage Patch kid; but in 1984 they were in very high demand and therefore very hard to find. People were getting into fist fights over these goofy looking dolls! I remember seeing footage on the evening news of shelf stockers struggling to open boxes of Cabbage Patch kids and attempting to fend off the crazed parents who were desperately trying to grab a doll out of the box.
Needles to say, I was worried. I asked my dad "Do you think Santa will be able to get a Cabbage Patch kid for me? What if he tries and someone punches him out?"
My dad told me " Don't worry, Santa will come through and no one was big enough or strong enough to punch out Santa Claus. In fact, if they tried, they would definitely NOT ever have Christmas presents again- and who would risk that? "
He said it. I believed it. And I told EVERYONE that Santa was going to bring me a Cabbage Patch Kid for Christmas. And I told them over and over and over and over again.
Guess what? Underneath the Christmas tree on Christmas morning was a genuine Cabbage Patch Kid. A bald baby boy, with a pair of jeans on, a white and yellow striped t-shirt, a blue windbreaker, white socks and white tennis shoes with blue stripes. His name was Wayne. And I still have him.
It wasn't until many years later that I found out what "Santa" went through to get me that Cabbage Patch Doll.
My dad spent hours upon hours checking out the stores looking for the Cabbage Patch Kids. He talked to everyone he could think of to try to find out when shipments were coming in and he would be at whatever store was getting a shipment standing outside the door waiting for the store to open. Unfortunately, so were a lot of parents, so he struck out again and again.
One night he was visiting his friend Ray's house and it was announced on the radio that a gas station in a little podunk town over two hours away was expecting a shipment of Cabbage Patch Kids that would be put on the shelves at midnight.
This is the kind of Dad I had. He and Ray looked at each other, looked at the clock, and jumped in Dad's car to drive two hours one way to this gas station to wait in line and try to get my Cabbage Patch Kid. At the gas station Dad and Ray pushed their way into the store, and somehow in the midst of all that crowd, my dad managed to get his hands on one of the dolls. Without even pausing to look at it, he paid forty dollars for it and they got in the car. Now forty dollars was a lot of money for my dad to spend on a Christmas gift, especially in 1984. We didn't have much money and for him to spend that kind of money for a doll was a big deal.
Once Dad and Ray got back from their "Cabbage Patch Kid Road Trip" and took the doll out and looked at it, they realized they had been ripped off. This was not a genuine Xavier Roberts Cabbage Patch Kid. It was (as my dad would later describe it) a "piss poor" imitation doll stuffed with saw dust that pretty much fell apart when it was taken out of the box.
My Dad was not the type to give up, especially once he had made a promise. He continued to check out sale papers, talk to "behind the scenes" store workers about CPK shipment arrivals, and spent just about every spare minute he had for the next two weeks trying to find a "genuine" Cabbage Patch Kid.
Just a few days before Christmas, the local drug store received a shipment of Cabbage Patch Kids. My dad, who I suspect had insider knowledge, was at the store, and managed to get his hands on a REAL Cabbage Patch Kid. (later he told me that he had it in his hands and some guy tried to grab it from him and they actually got into a bit of a tug of war over the doll LOL)
To rip off a formula of a popular credit card company:
Cabbage Patch Kid: $40.00
Dad who spends all his free time and money he didn't really have to spend to get that Cabbage Patch Kid for his daugther: Priceless

As some of you know, my dad died of cancer in August of 2004. I miss him terribly. And I still have, and cherish, Wayne, (the Cabbage Patch Kid). Even more precious to me is the story of Dad's "Cabbage Patch Kid Christmas Caper."

I look forward to hearing my mom retell that story this year. And I cannot wait for the day that I can share that story with my own children. Of course that is many many years down the road, but good stories are worth the wait, don't you think?