My parents never lied to me about Santa. Other grownups did, but my parents were very forthright. "Santa didn't give you presents this year because he's doing a stretch upstate for indecent exposure," they told me every year. And I appreciate that.
Of course, when Santa got out of the pen and I turned 15, I got to put away childish things and help my mother on the roof where she waited every Christmas Eve to try to snag the neighbors' gifts as Santa dropped them down the chimney. We had a secondhand pool skimmer and some football cleats. It was fun, apart from the time my mother fell off the roof and landed in the prizewinning hydrangea bushes. That wasn't a fun Christmas.
If I ever had kids, I would tell them the truth: Santa didn't bring them presents this year because my mother accidentally shot him with the crossbow she kept to ward off prowlers. I guess Santa was a little late that year, and my mother thought he was a prowler, so she winged him with a broad tip and we didn't get presents anymore. Or ever, really.
But I believe. I heard Santa yelling expletives and then flying away with his coked-up reindeer. My father always said he would have stolen the catalytic converter from the sleigh if Santa hadn't been so watchful, and really, that kind of puts the lie to my mother's claims that she thought Santa was a prowler, but she never lied about his existence, and that's the important thing.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Kee Hinckley
Als Antwort auf Ritalin Invitees • • •But amusing,