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December 22, 2012
santa and me: year two
I'd learned my lesson. I was not going to stake out Santa. But I also couldn't shake a feeling that would never truly leave me for the rest of my life: a woman was lying to me.
"Can you write down what you asked Santa for?" Mom asked, ever smooth.
"Is there anything you want to tell me, Mom?"
"Nope."
"Anything, say, you want to come clean about?"
"Not that I can think of," she growled.
And so it went for weeks, our little dance. Me, suspecting that Santa was really a middle-aged woman. Mom, going to mat for her fiction.
Christmas Eve finally came. "Well," I think I'll sack out early," I yawned around 9pm, eyeballing my mother for a reaction.
"Luvyagoonite," she droned without looking up from her self-help book.
I slipped upstairs and, after several hours of pre-gift vibrating, drifted asleep.
At precisely midnight, I was jolted awake by the unmistakable sound of eight tiny reindeer and an enormous sleigh coming in for a landing on the roof above my bedroom. It was deafening and, any other night of the year, a certain harbinger of the apocalypse.
CLOPPITY-CLOPPITY-CLOPPITY-jingling-CLOPPITY-CLOPPITY-CLOPPITY-jingling-CLOPPITY-CLOPPITY-CLOPPITY-jingling-CLOPPITY-CLOPPITY-CLOPPITY-jingling-CLOP!
Adrenaline surged. I couldn't help myself--I raced downstairs to the fireplace. There, I found my mother. She hadn't moved. But now the stockings were stuffed full, and presents towered under the tree.
"Didja see Santa? You just missed him," my mom said, still not looking up.
I was inconsolable. Not that my mother much tried to console me. Even my brother, who soon came in from outside, didn't seem impressed by my near miss. What's wrong with these people?
Tomorrow: round three
posted by john at 11:13 AM • permalink