The oldest Wild Thing wants a hoverboard for Christmas.

Let me clarify. Not the hoverboard. A hoverboard. One of those modern contraptions with wheels, LEDs, and a marketing department that thinks words don’t have to mean things anymore.

I was not impressed.

Anyone raised in the 1980s or 1990s knows this truth deep in their bones: today’s “hoverboards” are not hoverboards. They are self-balancing scooters that look like they were designed by someone who failed both physics and honesty.

When I say hoverboard, I am speaking of the true hoverboard. The sacred hoverboard. The one we all saw in Back to the Future II. The one that floated. The one that mocked gravity. The one that made an entire generation believe the future would be amazing, and also that we would all own power-lacing shoes by now.

For a brief, shining moment, we were told it was real.

Back in the late 1980s, the movie’s producers insisted the hoverboard existed. They went on television. They smiled. They nodded. They said it was a real toy and that the only reason kids couldn’t buy one was “safety concerns.” This was, in retrospect, a master class in lying to children.

We believed them.

I wanted that hoverboard more than I wanted reasonable expectations.

I wanted it so badly that in fifth grade I asked for a Back to the Future skateboard that looked like the hoverboard for Christmas. This decision deserves explanation.

I had never ridden a skateboard in my life.

I was not a skateboard kid. I did not wear Vans. I did not hang out at ramps. I was the kind of kid who treated scraped knees as a personal failure.

But I wanted that hoverboard.

Christmas morning came. There it was. A skateboard. Bright. Beautiful. Completely incapable of hovering.

I rode it maybe four times.

Each ride was an experiment in regret. Still, I kept it. Because ownership mattered. Because even a fake hoverboard was better than none at all. Because sometimes the dream is more important than the practicality.

Which brings me back to today’s “hoverboards.”

They don’t hover. They roll. They beep. They look like something designed to injure both dignity and ankles. Calling them hoverboards is like calling a lawn chair a space shuttle because you once sat in it and looked at the sky.

So no, I am not impressed.

If you need wheels, it is not a hoverboard. It is a lie with a charging cable.

Merry Christmas. And don’t forget to buy my book, Principles Are Like Pants, You Ought to Have Some.