The glass castle
1I never believed in Santa Claus.
2None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn't afford
expensive presents, and they didn't want us to think we weren't as good as other
kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of    fancy toys under the tree that
were supposedly left by Santa Claus. So they told us all about how other kids
were deceived by their parents, how the toys the grown-ups claimed were made by
little    elves wearing bell caps in their    workshop at the North Pole actually had
labels on them saying MADE IN JAPAN.
3    "Try not to look down on those other children," Mom said. "It's not their
fault that they've been    brainwashed into believing silly myths."
4    We celebrated Christmas, but usually about a week after December 25, when
you could find perfectly good bows and wrapping paper that people had thrown away and Christmas trees discarded on the roadside that still had most of their needles and even some silver tinsel hanging on them. Mom and Dad would give us a bag of marbles or a doll or a slingshot that had been marked way down in an after-Christmas sale.
5  Dad lost his job at the
gypsummine after getting in an argument with the
foreman, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas
Eve, Dad took  each of  us kids  out
into  the
desert  night
one by one.  I
had a blanket
wrapped around me, and when it was my turn, I offered to share it with Dad, but
he said no thanks. The cold never bothered him. I was five that year and I sat
sort out your computer翻译next to Dad and we looked up at the sky. Dad loved to talk about the stars. He
explained to us how they
rotated
through the night sky as the earth turned. He
taught us to identify the
constellations
and how to
navigate  by the North Star.
Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special
treats  for

people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks, he'd say, lived
in fancy apartments , but their air was so polluted they couldn't even see the stars. We'd have to be out of our minds to want to trade places with any of them.
6"Pick out your favorite star," Dad said that night. He told me I could have
it for keeps. He said it was my Christmas present. "You can't give me a star!"
I said. "No one owns the stars." "That's right," Dad said. "No one else owns them. You just have to claim it before anyone else does, like that dago fellow Columbus claimed America for Queen Isabella . Claiming a star as your own has every bit as much logic to it."
7I thought about it and realized Dad was right. He was always figuring out things like that.

8
Lori

I could have any star I wanted, Dad said, and Brian had already laid claim to them.

except Betelgeuse and Rigel , because

9    I looked up to the stars and tried to figure out which was the best one.

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