Anonymous Blonde's Christmas List

Think of all the fun I've missed!
Think of all the fellas that I haven't kissed.
Next year I could be oh so good if
you'll check off my Christmas list.

Ba-doo-be-boop. We did some terrible dancing to that in high school, dressed in demure ankle-length nightgowns and possibly suckling pacifiers. Aren't girls in flannel nighties creepier sex objects than girls in teddies? Perhaps I'll do an experiment on my local gummy old man. But still, it strikes me that the objects on that little singing starlet's list aren't so terrible -- a bright blue convertible? I'll take it. A ring? I think I'd mean on the phone. At any rate, if Santa -- or my gummy old man -- does see fit to hurry down the chimney in three weeks' time, this is what I'd like for Christmas this year:

1) The convertible from that song. Bright blue. Or turquoise. Good God! I can't even imagine. Never having been a California girl, I've never tooled down Route 66 with my golden hair whipping in the hot clean Western wind. And I would love to just once make out at a drive-in movie. I've made out in a lot of cars, but most of them were decidedly well-roofed and didn't have any heat and smelled of oil and marijuana.

2) Driving gloves. The leather kind with no fingers. I expect to open them under the tree, and then look wonderingly up at the giver, who will point outside to my blue convertible with a big bow tied around its midsection.

3) Dish-washing gloves. The yellow rubber kind. I know I can get them at the grocery store, but I always forget, and I think they're so chic for washing dishes. I'd just love to come to the door in a kerchief and a flimsy apron, with my sleeves rolled cunningly up to the elbows, and big, soapy rubber gloves on my hands. I would be very embraceable, I think.

4) At least half a case of Grandmaman's hooch. Childhood habits die hard, but I haven't had any of it for years. After I divorced my first husband and returned to the bosom of my loving family, my parents decided that thirteen was too young to be drinking hooch, and I was in disgrace with Grandmaman anyway, and then in high school and college we just drank beer, and after that it was mostly cocktails. But I've never gotten drunk in quite the same delirious way again. And I've never had such spiritual hangovers. 5) A diamond-studded case for my other grandmother's diaphragm. I have it because our cervixes are the same shape and color, but I have to keep it in this terrible pink plastic box with the name of a pharmaceuticals company on it. I think it deserves something a little classier and a little more vintage-y. It was made in the 1950s, so something in some kind of creamy Bakelite would do, too. 6) Three yards of yellow lace. 7) Some recordings by Satie. 8) A complete set of copper cooking-pots.

9) Some Henry Miller novels. 10) A couple of rabbits. I know it's not Easter, but I just kind of want some. I don't know. Maybe I could carry them around in my handbag and talk to them on the train. Maybe I could cook them up in a delicious stew. I mean, you can't really go wrong with rabbits.