THE BELL CURVE:

When I was 11 — maybe 12 — years old I got my first real lesson in the risks that abound and the price that is almost always paid in entertaining unreal expectations.

I was then publisher, editor, chief correspondent, copy boy and janitor for a home-grown neighborhood newspaper in my Fort Wayne, Ind., community.

This complex journalistic effort was accomplished on a 1928 portable typewriter a rich uncle had given me on my eighth birthday. I still have it, covered under layers of dust and memories, in my garage. In my early publishing days, I had to make multiple carbon copies.

I can’t remember now when mechanical copies came into my life. I just remember how much time had to be taken from creative work to meet the technical demands of publishing.

That’s where I was when I ran across a miniature printing press in one of the many Christmas catalogs I studied ardently. They always displayed in striking color and beneath large black headlines technical marvels that could reform my life.

And by far the most compelling was a table-top printing press that would deliver multiple copies of the neighborhood news I collected and wrote so painstakingly.

So I pointed out this item to my parents and then left the catalog, open to the printing press page, on high visibility places around the house until my mother told me to retire it to my room.

If I was aware that the price of this gadget was light years above the gift budget in those Great Depression times, I have no recollection of it. I didn’t allow such uncomfortable facts to get in the way of devout desires.

I went about the laborious carbon copy routine for my Christmas issue, rejoicing in the knowledge that my next issue would be on my spanking new equipment. If I felt any doubt, it was dissipated when I answered our doorbell a week before Christmas and was handed a box by the postman that my startled mother snatched from my hands — but not before I saw the return address on the package was a publishing company.

That should have made me suspicious since publishing companies rarely make miniature printing presses. But in my spacey condition, it was confirmation that my printing press had arrived. And my mother’s haste was simply to protect the surprise element when I opened my gift.

We performed that ceremony on Christmas morning, and I was awake before dawn, nurturing my great expectations. There were a few small gifts for me — and one large one. I opened the small ones first while I savored the large one. Finally, it was alone under the tree, and I turned to it while my parents watched in rapt anticipation.

The package was very heavy, and I dug vigorously at the wrapping. There was something solid underneath, and in a kind of numb shock, I tore the wrapping off and uncovered a book. A very large book. The cover page told me it was a one-volume encyclopedia.

“We thought you could use it the rest of your life for your writing,” said my mother.

And my father nodded vigorously.

I felt the tears welling up, and I tried to hold them back with a balled fist. But I knew that wasn’t going to work, so I carried the book into an adjoining room where I opened it and ruffled the pages. My parents followed me, uncertain about my reaction. My mother said: “We thought you would like it.”

And suddenly I showed my first visible sign of impending maturity.

“It’s terrific,” I said. “Now I’ll have all the answers in my own room.”

The lesson has stuck with me. I’m long past the time of being disappointed by gifts I get — or don’t get — at Christmas. But my missing printing press helped me to understand the broader implications of that lesson.

To me, the Christmas holidays are the symbolic printing press. They dangle great expectations before us, not so much in commercial gifts as in a promise that human foibles will somehow disappear for a week and all of our wishes and joyous anticipations will magically and completely take over.

This is a heavy burden to put on even Christmas. That doesn’t mean it can’t and won’t happen. Only that, in my experience at least, it is part of the magic to be surprised when it happens. Anything less sets you up for the disappointment and tears of a one-volume encyclopedia.

So this year, I’m not going to be disappointed if I don’t receive the top item on my Christmas list. I just hope that the people who have that list read this.

And that all of you who have stayed with me this far will have a joyous and merry Christmas.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.