Editor’s Note: This morning, Marlow helps to bring us back to a sense of who we are- or were- as kids and as parents. There is some amazing stuff happening here in The Swamp, but since the folks up there on the Hill that looms above us don’t seem to actually have the time to read what is in the Bills they pass, I think Marlow’s approach is refreshing. I am definitely going to be looking under my pillow on Christmas morning!

– Vic

Holiday Season and Innocence

I was under 10 when I figured out in short order that Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny were my folks. That December day was the official date of my loss of childhood innocence. My adult innocence’s loss would come 33 years later, yet life to date has left me still believing in sea monsters, the Boogeyman and divine retribution.

Fortunately, this loss wasn’t the result of some older neighborhood kid on a crusade to convert me to some truth about the adult world. It was pure happenstance that I opened the front door to receive a mail ordered Christmas present for one of us kids.

I slipped the package into the back of the hall closet and said nothing.

Now if the Elf on the Shelf had been around back then, I likely would have taken it down and burned that red-leotarded and green-shoed, East German Stasi bastard in our back yard barbeque to end his 24/7 surveillance of my life, that little f@cker. I also must admit that when my younger grandkids were afflicted by that prick, I took upon myself to invent the stealthy, invisible Revenge Troll. That led to occasional staging of various gruesome elf scenes with notes pinned on him to “lay off and deliver the full Monty of gifts or your decapitation is forthcoming.”

To lend credence to the Troll’s ominous intent, I would trace a small doll’s handprint at the note’s bottom and darkly color it as his mark. As the kids figured it out, the legend grew ever larger and brighter with them and their neighborhood friends. That was my small bit to make sure none of them turned into snowflakes.

Now I gotta admit that the Tooth Fairy deal was and remains sorta special to me. It was straight cash for a bunch of my chiclet teeth that made the pain of my gap-toothed lispy smile and their wiggling loss more than bearable.

I tried very hard with my two girls to make that myth last a long time. So, when the fairy wasn’t paying attention one morning in the 1970s, daughter #1 was distressed that she had left a tooth under her pillow but the tooth fairy had not visited. Fortunately, that day was a holiday. As the fairy’s resident mouthpiece, I told her that the tooth fairy didn’t work on holidays and that she should just put the tooth under her pillow that night. Sure enough, the tooth fairy visited that night, paid double and all was well.

When I missed one tooth night later on with daughter #2, it wasn’t a holiday, so the tooth dude of course paid double and left a note saying that some nights are busier than others.

One last “forget” with #2 led to two straight nights of oops — that left me shelling out 4X on third night. This daughter was delighted and openly discussed at the dinner table how she could play that into a fortune. She even tried to “lima bean” the forgetful Tooth Fairy. That lead to a note which warned “don’t mess with the Fairy.”

Some of my younger siblings remained true believers for a long time even up to 7th and 8th grades in a Midwestern Catholic elementary school full of believers during the mid 1960s, which likely made it easier to get to that point. I guess you could say we were sheltered but not total rubes.

If the web, Google, Siri or Alexa had been around, our innocence would not likely have lasted past 5 or 6 years of age, tops.

For me, the longer we kids enjoy the magic of Santa and the rest of those myths, the better. Life moves too fast as it is. Like the book says, “seeing is believing, but sometimes the most real things in the world are the things we can’t see.” Santa is real for those who believe.

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