Santa? Is that you?

The silent alarm sounded and I sat upright in my single bed. I was a little scared of what I had to now do, but I was also a little proud of the early warning system I’d developed that had allowed me to be accident free for more years than I could remember. At a full nine years of age I usually slept soundly through the night, but on this night, I had to pee.

Luckily the bathroom was right next to my room and I wouldn’t have to walk by that big scary painting in the living room; the one with the man and wife that stared back at me no matter where I stood in the room. My parents had laughed when I told them how it scared me, but at least they had been kind enough to move it out of the hallway…and to not tell my brothers why they had done so.

When my feet hit the cold December floor it crossed my mind to just jump back in bed and have an ‘accident’. Except for that watermelon incident last summer I really couldn’t remember the last time I’d wet the bed, but I was a big boy and I knew that my parents and Santa were keeping tabs on my progress. Santa! That’s right; it was Christmas Eve; how could I forget! Maybe I could endure the staring strangers long enough to check the living room and see if Santa had come. Maybe I would even catch him in the act!

The first thing I noticed when I entered the hallway was a dim light coming from the end of the house. I knew that Santa was magic, but he probably still needed a little light to do his work. I took a few steps and hesitated; would he be mad if I caught him? I would hate to do anything that might cause a reduction of my anticipated bounty. Before I could take another step I heard a muffled voice coming from the living room. I strained to listen because I knew what Santa’s voice sounded like; he usually called before I went to bed on Christmas Eve. Then I heard another voice. It was different from the first and much more feminine. Was Mrs. Claus with him?

When I heard my mother’s familiar giggle I realized that it was my parent’s voices I was hearing in the living room. Now there was nothing to be scared of I thought as I charged down the hall! Maybe they had even talked to Santa and made a few last minute suggestions. I could get an early start playing with my new toys!

When I entered the room they both fell silent. They wore the same embarrassed expression they had when I had come to their bed one night after a terrible nightmare; something is wrong. And here they were, standing in the living room playing with the toys Santa had brought for me! Sensing my disappointment, my father recovered quickly and scooped me up in his arms. He cleared a place on the sofa, pulled my mother to us and sat all three of us on the couch. Showered with comfort and kisses, they proceeded to explain a true story that changed the way I looked at life (and certainly Christmas) forever.

This is one of my favorite stories, but wish as I may, not an ounce of it is true. The Beaver and all six Brady’s probably learned this way, but I learned the truth about Santa the way most every other kid of my era did. I learned through ridicule, false information and embarrassment. I may have been a little angry at first, but I quickly realized that if I just played along, the gifts would keep coming in. Wink wink.

But the real value of this lesson is one that I have to remind myself of regularly as I age. I know that no medals are awarded for simply being right. I know that nothing positive comes from ‘calling out’ others on the little white lies that allow them to make it through a work week. I know that believing in something different does not necessarily make it wrong and that being mad about something you cannot change will ultimately stop the flow of gifts. I know now that there is a Santa Claus, and if you truly believe, he will come every day.

Groundhog Day

Anybody who has known me for very long knows that I have always had a fascination with animals lying dead by the road. Yes road kill! But before you picture me cooking up a long dead possum or raccoon, let me explain. The fascination revolves around the chance to look at these animals up close and personal without risking my health and safety. I would never dream of killing most of these animals myself, so if they are already dead…why not? It always kind of seemed like meeting a celebrity to me.

I come by this trait honestly. When I was a kid we often stopped and inspected road kill, and if it was something rare like a big rattlesnake or copperhead, we would take it home and save the skin. I still remember the look on the bag boy from A&P’s face when he opened the trunk on our VW Beetle only to stare in to the eyes of a quickly thawing road-killed bobcat! If I remember correctly that was the last time he hit on my mother. Let’s just say that not everyone shared (or understood) our fascination.

Over the years inspecting road kill gave me a great understanding of what lurked in the woods around our home. I could brag that I had identified and touched most of the wild animals native to middle Georgia. Sure they were dead, but I petted foxes, coyotes, skunks, wild hogs, and countless species of snakes, hawks and owls. This up close and personal inspection allowed me to make positive identifications in the field as well as those drive-by inspections done at 60 miles per hour on the way to school. “That was a grey fox” I would counter when one of my brothers said “poor dog” or just simply “awwwe”. Maybe DOT would hire me as an amateur biologist!

But even the truest of pleasures has a way of fading over time. After years of poking these deceased creatures with a stick I was beginning to think I had seen it all, and the number of times we actually stopped decreased. It had to be something we couldn’t identify or something really special. Of course my wife-to-be knew of this fascination, and while I can’t positively say she enjoyed stopping and viewing the carnage, she did a good job of at least playing along. It wasn’t long before she could tell the difference between a red fox and a grey one at almost 80 miles per hour! Looks like I had chosen a good one.

So as I approach my wedding anniversary of twenty four years, I am reminded of one of the most unusual road kill identifications of my illustrious career. We were married on February 4^th, and while I won’t say that the groundhog’s search for his shadow had any influence on our destination, we chose to head to the cold mountains of North Georgia anyway. In spite of the frigid weather we had a wonderful time and I somehow managed to keep my eyes on the road; tougher than it sounds for a guy like me traveling through an exotic location with potentially unidentified species of animals unable to safely cross the road.

We had almost made it to flat and familiar ground when we zoomed by a reddish, immobile lump lying a few feet off of the side of the road. “Was that a grey fox?” my wife asked as I applied the brakes and pulled on to the shoulder of the road. I had been wondering the same thing, but I was delighted that she was the one that brought it up. Nothing kills a honeymoon quite like loading a dead animal into the back of the truck beside a busy road! The joy of adding a new animal to my long list of positively identified road kill quickly faded as I realized the irony this one. His prediction of six more weeks of winter was incorrect…he only managed four days!