embarrassed “no.” It was the answer I’d been expecting, having recently deduced the impossibility of the physics of Santa’s single night of worldwide gift distribution after watching a movie about clocks and time in my second-grade class. But still, I made a grand show of my mortification, dropping my jaw and making the standard “I can’t believe you would do this to me” face that kids become so adept at pulling out in any circumstance in which they are denied some impulsive whim. I even forced myself to start crying, asking tearfully, “Then who eats the cookies and milk I put out on Christmas Eve?” My mother confirmed what I had always suspected and yet didn’t want to believe—it was my father. In a colossal act of grief management, I decided to seek revenge. I ended up mixing a devil’s brew of spices, cooking oils, vinegars, and spit in order to teach my lie-mongering father a lesson about deceiving his only son. However, as I mixed the vile-smelling cocktail in the kitchen sink while my mother watched, amused and somehow relishing my plan, as if she had wanted to get back at my father for all the years of lying he had forced her into, something happened. I was suddenly overcome with a strange mixture of disgust, grief, nostalgia, and love for my father. The image of my dad bringing out presents that he and my mother had taken the time to research, buy, and wrap was too much for me to take. He was only trying to be a good dad, I thought. I just couldn’t reward his earnestness with a poisoned glass of swill. And so I ended up dumping the nauseating liquid down the drain, pouring my father a fresh glass of milk and putting it out next to a plate of just opened store-bought cookies. And when I unwrapped my presents the next morning, I pretended to be excited that Santa had arrived during the night, even though my mother threw looks at my father that showed they both knew I no longer believed but was somehow trying to squeeze one more year out of the Santa lie.
But I couldn’t. Santa was dead. Rest in peace, you goddamn, fat-assed liar.
After that, whenever my parents would leave me alone in the house in the month of December, I would turn into a junior McCloud and scour my parents’ bedroom for the gifts that I knew I was going to get anyway, albeit sometime in the not-near-enough future. One year, when I found a particularly good batch of toys my parents had successfully figured out I wanted, I spent the next several weeks pulling out the not-yet-wrapped presents from the back of my mother’s closet whenever she left the house. I would carefully extract the toys from their packages and then play with them nervously, one ear focused on the door in our family room, listening for my parents’ return. It wasn’t particularly fun playing with these illegal toys but the thrill of doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing made it feel dirty and exciting.
However, my skulduggery skills proved to be far superior to my judgment skills. On Christmas Eve, when my father asked me what presents I thought I was going to get that year, I put on a big act of divining and ended up naming every single present in my mother’s closet in excruciating detail, including an exact description of an obscure knock-off version of a G.I. Joe scuba outfit made for a low-rent action figure transparently named “Army Jack.” My mother and father exchanged disappointed looks with each other as I made matters worse by pretending to have no idea what they were upset about.
“What? What’s the matter? Why are you guys looking at each other like that?” I said, performing one of the most unconvincing portrayals of an innocent person ever perpetrated on stage or screen. My guilt was complete when, the next morning, I got up only to find my presents lying under the Christmas tree unwrapped, and my mother sitting on the couch drinking a cup of tea, saying disappointedly, “What’s the point of wrapping them? You already
But I couldn’t. Santa was dead. Rest in peace, you goddamn, fat-assed liar.
After that, whenever my parents would leave me alone in the house in the month of December, I would turn into a junior McCloud and scour my parents’ bedroom for the gifts that I knew I was going to get anyway, albeit sometime in the not-near-enough future. One year, when I found a particularly good batch of toys my parents had successfully figured out I wanted, I spent the next several weeks pulling out the not-yet-wrapped presents from the back of my mother’s closet whenever she left the house. I would carefully extract the toys from their packages and then play with them nervously, one ear focused on the door in our family room, listening for my parents’ return. It wasn’t particularly fun playing with these illegal toys but the thrill of doing something I wasn’t supposed to be doing made it feel dirty and exciting.
However, my skulduggery skills proved to be far superior to my judgment skills. On Christmas Eve, when my father asked me what presents I thought I was going to get that year, I put on a big act of divining and ended up naming every single present in my mother’s closet in excruciating detail, including an exact description of an obscure knock-off version of a G.I. Joe scuba outfit made for a low-rent action figure transparently named “Army Jack.” My mother and father exchanged disappointed looks with each other as I made matters worse by pretending to have no idea what they were upset about.
“What? What’s the matter? Why are you guys looking at each other like that?” I said, performing one of the most unconvincing portrayals of an innocent person ever perpetrated on stage or screen. My guilt was complete when, the next morning, I got up only to find my presents lying under the Christmas tree unwrapped, and my mother sitting on the couch drinking a cup of tea, saying disappointedly, “What’s the point of wrapping them? You already
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