Kung-Fu Grip Christmas

My wife is incredible. She has made this Christmas the best one in a while.

A little backstory: About 15 years or so back she came home with an old doll that she had from childhood. It had no clothes and half the hair was pulled out because as a child she carried it around by the hair. My wife brought it home to save it from the dumpster. It sat in the basement for a couple of years. One day I hear of a place nearby that restores old dolls, so I bring it there and have it restored, it was including new hair and dress. When I went to retrieve it at the shop, it sat there in front of me for 5 minutes before the shopkeeper waited on me. I didn't even recognize it it was that good. When I gave it to her for Christmas , she was in tears. To this day it sits on her dresser.

Today for Christmas she returned the favor. When I was little I had a GIJoe. It was the "new" model with "life-like" hair and "Kung-Fu Grip". I had it for years. One day, as I was starting to get into Star Trek, I decided that Joe needed a shave, as no one in Starfleet had a beard. In fact, I even shaved his head. I took his army clothes off and planned on making a Starfleet uniform, but it being the early 70s, I soon found that finding patterns for such an outfit was fruitless. And then, as kids that age do, the plan was dropped and the shaved, unclothed GIJoe was stowed away.

As you can probably figured out by now, the Mrs. had the doll restored. When I opened the box, I just thought she went on EBay and found me another doll as I don't remember ever taking it out of my parents house when they died. The person that did the restoration not only did an amazing job restoring the hair, but he also found the same edition dogtags and clothes that came with that certain figure. It is truly an amazing site. The only way I could tell that it was my old Joe is a small gash on one of the hands from when I once tried to make him ride my Evil Knievel Crash Car not thinking they were not compatible. As soon as I find a stand for it, it will be placed right next to the doll in our bedroom.

I got a few other things for Xmas that I really liked. But I will always remember the Christmas I gave her childhood back and the Christmas that she returned the favor.