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Show The Magic Christmas Stocking y By KENDAL D. PATTLN This story that I'm going to tell you, is about a very strange Christmas season. It started out about three for four days alter Thanksgiving. We had just gone to a little toy store in the middle of town, to buy the Christmas decorations we needed for the house. WHKN I saw the big. red, hand knit Christmas stocking, I wanted it more than the one I had at home. It didn't cost much so my parents bought it for me. We took it home and hung it up with all the rest ot the stockings. Nobody really noticed that my Christmas stocking was any different than all of the other stockings until Dec. 14. which is twelve days before Christmas. On that day something some-thing very strange happened. "IIKY! STKYK, there's something in your Christmas slocking." said my little brother. "Mom. I thought you said that Santa Claus came on Christmas eve." I went running over to see what it was. Then everyone noticed it was different than the one I had last year. We knew that there was something strange about that Christmas stocking. Inside was a little mechanical robot about four inches high, with medium sized round bulbous eyes made of red plastic, arms that moved with hands that gripped little things, and legs that walked. IT WAS very strange, because be-cause we had never seen one like it in our lives. We inspected in-spected it thoroughly and . couldn't find any power source to run the weird little thing. We didn't think much of it and went to bed. The next morning we woke up and ate breakfast. As I was getting ready to leave for school, I noticed that there was something in my Christmas Christ-mas stocking again. I went running run-ning over to see what it was. IT LOOKED like the robot I had received the day before, but it had female features, so I thought that they must go together. After that we started to get suspicious about the stocking, or about someone putting them in it. It was so strange because we had never seen anything the same. Now on the morning of the 16th, or on the third day after the strange appearances started, we went rushing into the living room to see if it had something in it. I was the first one to go stumbling down the small flight of stairs. What a surprise it was, for there in the deep down reaches of that strange Christmas stocking was a little, tiny baby robot! WELL, WE were really suspicious sus-picious about what was going on. We took the stocking back to the little store in the middle of town to see if they knew about the strange happenings. They didn't know anything about ab-out it so we took it back home. The next day was a space vehicle made for three little robots (like mine). They fitted in it perfectly. It had a plastic dome that opened and shut like a door. It had moveable tail fins that turned w hen the steering steer-ing mechanism was moved. I STICK the three robots in it and they made it fly! They actually knew how to make it fly around and not crash into anything that was an obstacle. Now we wrote a letter to NASA to ask them if they could send someone to check this strange toy out. We told them all about it in the letter. They had someone there as fast as they could, but during that time we had found jet packs for each of the robots. They could also make the jet packs fly. The lady that they had sent over didn't know what to do, but she couldn't figure out anything that could explain it. SHE WENT back and said that NASA would send someone some-one that knew more about strange things. Now that had finished the 8th day straight of these strange happenings. We had tried everything to try to stop it from happening. We had locked the doors tighter, set up cameras, but we just couldn't figure out the strange happenings. They sent the NASA strange happenings specialist out to our house and we demonstrated de-monstrated the abilities of the strange robots. He checked out the little robots and couldn't find a power source to run the little robots. WITH ALL the happenings of the busy morning I had forgotten for-gotten to check my Christmas stocking. We all went over to see if there was anything in the stocking that day. It really surprised sur-prised the NASA specialist. He asked if we had put the little robot parts into the stocking. We told him that we hadn't, and that we could prove it to him that we hadn't. That morning we had found a whole bunch of electrical wires, some wire connectors, (or that's what we thought they were) and some robot parts. THE NEXT morning there was a book in the stocking. Now this wasn't a normal book you would find in your local bookstore. This book had instructions in-structions on how to build the amazing robots and their vehicles. vehi-cles. We had proved that we hadn't put the book into the stocking by stringing trip wires across the door, and windows, and if they were broken they would set off an alarm, and it didn't ring. Well that proved that we didn't put the things in the stocking. That scared him so bad that he packed and left as fast as he could. AS HE left he said he would send a group of people back. I had been thinking about what 1 had been getting. 1 called back to him and said. "Don't send anybody back!" He heard me and said that he wouldn't. Now why do you think I said that they shouldn't send anyone any-one back? Well, my parents didn't like what I had said, and they asked me why I had said that. I said that if they or what, had given us some wires and an instruction instruc-tion book, then the next time we would probably receive parts to the shell of the robots. THE NEXT morning we had found what I had mentioned the day before, robot outer shells. (It also told us. on a note, where we could find a whole bunch of these outer shells). That had finished the I llth straight day. and so the next day was Christmas. We were all excited about Santa Claus coming, so went to bed all excited about the next day. Y We woke up on Christmas day as happy as ever. We had to wait until everybody was up until we could go see what we ;;; got. My parents signaled for us to go down stairs, and we all went flying into the front room. WE WERE all so surprised to see my Christmas stocking. It had overflowed! There were little toys all over the floor under my stocking. I went run- ning over to see what was in it this time. I pulled the stocking off the mantle and dug down to the bottom. There in the bot- f torn of the stocking were the parts to make the vehicles fly. I It also had a note saying: "The things you have re- 'A ceived in the last twelve days have been gifts from me. I am the magic stocking you bought at the little store in the middle of town. I have been all over the country within the last 500 years I have been alive. The little kids I've been around I have been nice or mean. "THEY ALL got a note on g Christmas similar to this one, I but every note was different. I They all said close to the same I things, they all got a series of I toys. How I got around the world, is after the Christmas holiday is over the kids gave me away because I need to go to different children, so I ask you now to give me away be-fore be-fore the next Christmas holiday. "If you decide to keep me you will have terribly bad luck and will be very sad. I will not give you things next year if you do keep me." WELL, IT was a very strange note and I could understand under-stand it. It did look kind of shabby now that he had mentioned men-tioned it. I gave the Christmas stocking to my best friend for a birthday present later in the year. We went to the store the stocking had mentioned and sure enough they had all the parts we needed. We bought enough parts for about five of the little robots. We built the robots and sold them. They sold out within a half hour at the local grocery store. WE WENT and bought enough for 20 robots, and they went as fast as the first ones. My dad had an idea to buy a whole crate of parts. We built all the robots and sold them. We decided that we should copyright them, so we did. They were a big hit all over the country. We decided to spread them across the state. We made a profit of $10,000 in two months, and that was just across the state. We were making enough that my dad could quit his job. We had now built a shop to build the robots in and we had now started to make their vehicles. WE BOUGHT a new house up by the really rich people. We spread throughout the country. We were making a bundle of money. We were hiring hir-ing people to work for us. We had incorporated a company and we were nationally know n. We then spread across the world. We were now known kno-wn world wide. We were multimillionaires and still going strong. It had been about ten years since we had started and I now owned the company. NASA HAD done research on the flight systems and now knew the secret of the gravitational gravita-tional movement of the little vehicles. They had enlarged " l'Z74" |