The first time I ever heard of this place, its thick paper catalog sat collecting dust on the coffee table. The front cover had a mailing address label with my parent's names on it, slowly peeling away on the bottom corner. Some days it would rest underneath the TV Guide, other days on top of it. Sometimes it would be hidden underneath a pile of that day's two local newspapers, my father having worked for one of them, bringing home the late edition. The catalog always arrived in the early fall, a few months before Christmas. I was six years old when I started flipping through those pages, the freshly-pressed ink bringing all the color photographs to life. What seemed like thousands of vibrant photos on every page came with product descriptions at the bottom. I was captivated by just how much they jam-packed into this catalog, three-hundred pages of almost every marvelous thing. Many things, of course, I did not need. But I wanted. My parents never ordered anything thro...