Angel Tree Anxiety

So yesterday during lunch I met my sister for some family Christmas shopping at the mall where I also picked up an Angel Tree angel from the Salvation Army tree.  For those of you who are not familiar with this event, see www.jcp.com/angel (you can adopt one online) conveniently this year.  Anyway, I remember growing up my mom would always take me and my sisters to the mall and we'd get to pick out an angel to shop for for Christmas! So Dan and I wanted to carry on this tradition this year.  I picked a 9 year old boy, and Dan and I set out to shop right after work.  Come to find out, they don't give you a lot of information about your 'angel', just all his clothing/shoe sizes for his "need" list and a "want" list that singly listed an XBox360....well, since money isn't growing on the trees in our backyard quite yet (I guess we're not using the right fertilizer)...we weren't going to be purchasing Marion the XBox 360 this year.  They don't even give you any pertinent info like what he's interested in, etc., so fulfilling some 'wants' like toys was a little difficult as well as clothing choices.  Are khakis cool for Marion? Is this football t-shirt cool? Does he even like sports? What about this fleece jacket? Navy, black?  What kinda socks are cool? I wear no-show, but what if he likes tube? We didn't want him to get bullied at school due to our poor understanding of what's cool to the 9 year old Marion.  We did our best and walked away with khakis, a football (not team specific) long sleeve t-shirt, some black and gray tennis shoes, a black fleece jacket, no-show socks, and plaid boxers.  Then onto toys...Dan decided a football and basketball combo would promote active behavior, and surely wouldn't get him bullied...and then he immediately picked out a Nerf gun that looked like a shotgun (it had barrels and you had to cock it before shooting)...I proceeded to put back that gun, and promote a more 'outer-space' looking Nerf gun...the last thing I wanted was Marion to decide to bring his 'shotgun replica' Nerf gun to school.

Anyway, I'm sure Marion will end up being a cargo jean and plaid shirt wearing little boy that prefers white tennis shoes and is in the band, and Dan and I will have failed miserably.  If that is the case, I put partial blame on the Salvation Army, and there lack of research, because I know Santa would know everything about little Marion, and I...a mere over-sized elf...did not.  Merry Christmas Marion!