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On a visit to my mother in Mississippi, we fell into reminiscing about the old days. I asked her, after more than 60 years of birthday, Christmas and Mother's Day gifts, what her favorite was. She didn't hesitate.
"That vegetable slicer you gave me!" she exclaimed. "I've never been prouder of anything."
Her voice broke. "The way you saved up your money and kept it a secret like you did."
Certainly, she seemed more touched in retrospect than she had on the morning she opened the box over a half-century earlier. I didn't remember the gift being the stellar success that she did.
I was 13 when I decided to give her a gift to make up for all the others. Until then, there had been a succession of misfires — a nauseatingly sweet perfume saved for some special occasion that never arrived; long, dangly rhinestone earbobs bravely worn to the A&P once and then mysteriously lost; a crimson lipstick favored mostly by circus clowns that drew sympathetic smiles from the other mothers at church. But this time was going to be different.
Ron Popeil, in the world's very first infomercial, shouted from our black-and-white TV set that he had the perfect solution: