Good Tidings:
a Heartwarming Christmas Story
for incredibly disturbed individuals,
by Rewired.
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Raves for Rewired’s Good Tidings…
“A Christmas Tale of Epic Proportions… move over mister Red-Nosed Reindeer, step aside A Christmas Carol, Good Tidings is the new and true tale of Christmas…”
— Society for Compulsive Liars.
“What were we thinking?”
— Tim’s parents in regards to the night of his conception.
“I think it was a wonderful story [hic] I [belch] think we’ve got the next Stephen King here. Read Good Tidings and you’ll never again [fart] experience such a strange mixture of warm enlightenment, [incomprehensible noise], confusion, and terrifying thrills… spare a quarter?”
— Drunken, illiterate vagrant midget man that smells like pickles.
“This boy’s story is all the guys at the office talk about. He’s even made our Annual Target For Assassination. I think he’s on to us. You could read this story, Good Tidings, but I’d have to kill you.”
— Mr. X of Secret Government Program plotting to Dominate the World.
“He makes me want to vomit.”
— Santa.
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I had just recently turned six, and it was the last day of first grade before Christmas break. The teacher was up in front, gabbing away about American History, a topic no one but a few kiss-ups in the class cared to pay any attention to. My mind was following it’s usual habit of wandering, and though I was perfectly content staring out the window for the moment what I truly desired was to go home. I wanted more than anything to be alone in my room, drawing some pictures and sipping the hot chocolate grandma was always so kind to make me.
It didn't take long, though, before I began to get horribly bored. Not only that, but I was growing very agitated in regard to my behind, which was growing all the more numb with every passing second I remained sitting in that chair. Wasn't this class taking longer than usual? It seemed as though we'd been there for hours. What was it she was gabbing about, anyway?
"The Civil War began in 1861, and by the time it was over the African Americans were no longer considered slaves, and were finally recognized as free individuals. They were finally permitted the same rights as the whites."
At times such as these – at a constant, in fact – ideas and questions flowed into my head which I was afraid to verbalize. I was, of course, considered an ignorant child and I thought asking too many questions would seem far too crazy or silly – especially the questions that always ran amok in my head. I’d always figured that the answers to such questions were probably so common knowledge that to ask them would be letting everyone know I was a fool. I had figured that I was, in all probability, just the ignorant child that they seemed to treat me as – perhaps even more so than my peers – and so I stood silent amidst the screaming voices in my mind.
I stood silent, that is, until that day in class. My mind even more numb in it’s boredom than my butt was in that chair, I decided I had nothing to loose. I was here to learn, and I was learning nothing of interest so far. I could take it no longer, so I decided to do what I had always wanted to do but never had the courage to do – I let my heart and mind run my mouth.
"Was it right to have blacks as slaves?" I found myself asking.
"No!" She said, obviously annoyed. Her reaction was quite swift; the kind of reaction I'd expect. By the look in her face, I felt that she misunderstood me and my question, however. I decided to go on, regardless.
"Then why did us white people do it? Did we think it was right back then, or was it right and then it became bad?"
"It wasn't right at all.” She said, shaking her head and saying the words slowly and digging her eyes into me so that I would get the message clearly. “They merely thought it was right, because they knew of no other way to live. They had a certain ignorance – yet don't let that pass as an excuse, because it's not."
"But it was so wrong you'd think they woulda saw it was wrong.” I said. I still wasn’t perfectly clear on the topic. “Did it used to be right, and then change to being bad, though?"
"Everyone has different beliefs,” she said, a bit calmer now. “Even those same people may have different beliefs at different times."
"Then which ones are right?" I asked. I was as confused as ever. "The beliefs I have now... that everyone has equal rights… am I wrong?"
"No one really knows, Benjamin." She smiled. "You're a very inquisitive young man today, and I appreciate that. But we do have a lot more to cover until we go home. If you have any questions, please feel free to stay after class – I'd be happy to speak with you privately."
It wasn't much longer until the bell rang. I stood up, hoping to regain sensation in the lower half of my body. What I received was the sensation of needles being poked into every pore of my skin below my naval. It subsided slowly but surely. I awaited the departure of the rest of the class so I could finally approach the teacher with the questions that had been building up in me for so long. I thought that I could, perhaps, even get some reasonable answers. At that time I figured any answer would be satisfactory, but my experience that day would help me realize how careful I was towards believing anything unquestionably. I never knew how picky I was until the conversation Misses Vonderhue and I had that day.
"So,” she said to me, leaning on her desk as I approached her with my book bag thrown over my shoulder. She was holding a deep red apple one of the stuck ups had brought her that morning. “Why all these questions all of a sudden?"
"Just wondering," I said, shrugging shyly. "I didn't do anything bad, did I?"
"No!" She said, smiling and patting my head with her free hand. "No, child. Don't worry. Of all the children in this classroom, a quiet little boy like you isn't one of much concern. You're very intelligent and creative. Santa won't be putting lumps of coal in your stocking -- unlike some of the bad little girls and boys in my class."
Her smile seemed to remain on her face as she walked back around the desk, sat in her chair, and closed her top drawer after putting in a pen. She was about to put the apple to her mouth when I just couldn't hold it any longer.
"What's good for you isn't good for Debbie's mommy."
She looked up at me. Her mouth was still open. The apple, uneaten. "What?"
"You said last week that abortion was killing. That it was murder. Debbie's mommy said it was the right of the lady who was gonna have the child weather or not she wants to keep it. She said it's not killing, you said it is. You say it's wrong, and she says it's right."
"What's your point?" She asked curiously. She looked as if she was in shock, as if I’d drawn a knife on her or something. She looked offended, wanting to strike back but suddenly very fearful of me. "Everyone has different view, Ben."
"Then there isn't a good and bad for everyone?"
"Well," she stumbled, "...generally, yes, there is a right and wrong for everyone."
"So is abortion wrong?" I asked. "And the electric chair – is that wrong, too?"
"Yes! Well… for me it is!" She said, almost yelling now. She held onto the apple tightly now, and pressed it onto the table to lift herself a bit up off the chair. She took a deep breath and leaned over the desk. She seemed to lean forward every time she wanted to get a point across and get your full attention. It worked, too. She had very striking eyes; even as a young child I knew she was a charismatic woman. "Look, no one knows who draws the lines between good and evil, all right? We all try to do it ourselves."
"What about what’s real and what’s not real?” I asked. Questions were spilling out of my head like a fountain. “If people aren’t sure about the lines between right and wrong, what about what’s real and what’s not?”
“Well, we don’t really know. Not all of it. Not for sure. But we have a good idea.”
“But then your ideas are really no more useful or right than mine, or Debbie’s mommy, or my mommy.” I said, but it was more in the tone of a question than a statement. “And then Santa and god don't know the lines, either? Or the government?"
"Benjamin," she said, swallowing hard, looking down at her one fiddling hand, at the apple in her other, and then back up at me again, "you'll miss your bus.”
I put my hands in my pockets nervously, feeling defeated. I kicked the tiles below my feet lightly and looked at the ground.
“Okay, Missus Vonderhue,” I said, and turned to walk away.
“Benjamin?” She said, as my back was to her and I was on my way out the doorway. She threw me the apple, and I caught it. “Have a Merry Christmas, okay, dear?"
I nodded. I made it to the bus just before the doors closed.
(69)
"You sure ask lots of silly questions."
I had been staring out the bus window, unaware that anyone ahd even sat beside me in the seat. When I looekd voer, though, I saw a small black boy in a yellow rain coat. I never really talked to this kid before, but i recognized him from class. He always wore a rain coat, even in the dead of summer, even when it wasn't raining. He was little and skinny. Some of the bullys in class called him bannana-boy.
"They're not silly," I told him.
"You're like my uncle," he said. "He's a skinny man with a big beard and a huge afro. Mama says he looks like a mutant Q-tip. Dad calls him the heretic. That's what you are, kinda, a heretic."
"Heretics are supposed to be evil, aren't they?"
"Not evil, just misled. You seem nice and all. And well-meaning. Like a... like," he looked frustrated. He turned to the bus driver. "Hey, Miss Bus Driver Lady?"
"What?" She snapped, annoyed.
"What's the words for a, a like, a nice heretic? One that's not trying to do harm or nuthin', he just doesn't know what he's doing? Led the wrong way or somethin' like that?"
"Um... let's say... a misguided prophet." She said. "Now go away and let me hate my job."
"Okay." He said, and turned to me. "That's what you are, a misguided poffit."
"I just get confused sometimes. It seems like adults just like telling us things that don't make any real sense at all. Like the things they say just don't fit."
An oversized kid, they called him Piggy Milano, he turned around from the seat in front of me and looked me in the eyes. "Not my dad. He knows everything."
"Nobody knows everything."
"Adults do." He said. "Don't you know anything, stupid?"
"Shut up." Bannana-boy said.
"Why don't you peel off that raincoat, bannana-butt?"
"Why don't you get a tan?"
Then Piggy just turned back around. Bannana-boy just grinned. I just shook my head and turned to look back out the window. It was raining now. The outside looked sad and muddy through the blurs the rain left on the window.
But banna-boy? He just wouldn't quit.
"I guess you're right," he said. "Adults don't make any sense lots of the times. Like my mom, she says we came from storks."
"Storks?"
"Yeah. They're like a kind of a bird. Like a pelican, I guess. She says that this bird, he brought me to her. It just doesn't make sense, though. I mean, where did the bird get me from?"
"God." Piggy said, turning around again. "You guys aren't very smart, are you?"
"Then were did god get us from?" Banna-boy said, staring dead into him.
"God made us."
"And who made god?" I yelled, quite irritated. "If god made the birds and made us for the birds to carry, who made god? It just doesn't make any sense. And your dad doesn't know everything. Nobody knows everything. Sometimes I think nobody really knows anything at all."
"My dad does so know everything. You're going to hell." Piggy said. "You want to got to hell when you die?"
A kid directly across from yus burst into laughter. "You don't go to hell when you die, dummy."
"Yeah, huh," Piggy shot back at him. The poor kid, he almost looked hurt. "My dad said so."
"I dont care what your pop says," he laughed. "You don't go to hell when you die."
"Really?" Bannana-boy said.
"Yeah, my dad says his work is hell, and he's not dead. He says it pays the bills, though, and that the money makes it good enough for him."
The bus driver peeped through the rear-view. "This place where your dad works, hell?"
"Yeah?"
"Do they get Christmas bonuses?"
(69)
After getting home, I was pretty sad. I was pretty quiet as I was munching on the chocolate chip cookie my mother had given to me before supper, as she had explained, `against better judgment’. I had been thinking about Santa, and the fact that our chimney is small, and that some people don't even have chimneys. I then asked my mother a question that, to her, must've seemed to come out of nowhere.
“Mommy, why does Santa use the chimney?” I asked. "Why doesn't he just use the door?"
She had been off in her own world while stirring the beef stew and had hardly noticed that I’d still been standing there. She stopped for a moment. Without looking down at me, she said, "sometimes, he does use the door."
"Really?"
"Sure." She said. "Santa has his elves make the best skelaton keys. They can get in anywhere."
This satisfied me to a degree, but the more I thought about it the less it all made sense. I finally realized something, and it seemed to my tiny mind to be the grandest of revelations: my mother and father thought that I was a mindless, ignorant little boy.
She picked up the apple on the counter. "Where did this come from, hon?"
"The teacher gave it to me."
"Huh," she said. "When I was in school, it was the kids who gave teachers the apples."
As I stood by my mother by the stove, I began to recall the plaguing confusion that had encompassed me all throughout my six years of life – confusion that my parents never ceased to perpetuate. For instance, my parents declared that magic was superstition, ghosts and fairies were not real, and monsters were mere fantasy, and therefore there was nothing to be afraid of at night. It wasn’t a hairy brown creature tapping on your window; it was the wind that had blown a branch against the glass. That wasn’t a little demon creature sitting on the chair by your desk; it was a clump of laundry or a rolled-up blanket. The creaks were due to the houses’ age. There was nothing out to get me. It was merely a nightmare. Dreams couldn’t hurt me unless I let them.
Though I may have disbelieved all of that deep down, I could have accepted it much easier back then and had become much more satisfied with such proclamations if only such assurances hadn’t lied in direct contradiction to other `assurances.’ Though my parents had maintained throughout the years that monsters weren’t real and magic did not exist, they were open to the fact that every Christmas a ripe jolly old elf slipped down our chimney – a chimney which was far too narrow for me, let alone a big fat man dressed in red and white with a bag full of toys - and placed presents under our housed tree and stuck goodies in socks we hung by thumb-tacks up above the fireplace. The big guy had little helpers, of course - elves, as it were - who my parents professed `made' the toys that were given to me, even though it was clear that they had brand names.
She wiped her hands with her towel, threw it on the counter, took the apple and went towards the coffee table in the livign room. "I leave it for your father," she said, "a little cinamin and he'll be in heaven."
As she was on her way to the coffe table by his usual chair in the living room, though, I stopped her. I looked up at her, munching on a chocolate chip cookie, and tugged at her shirt. "Elves make the toys, right ma?"
"Of course, honey," she said with a laugh, stopping in her tracks and looking down at me. She put the apple on the mantle above the fireplace. “Why else would Santa need elves?"
I was about to bring up the skelaton keys, but I didn't.
"Why do the toys have brand names, then?" I said. "Gerald's father works for a toy factoryl, and he's never talked about elves working with him. And it's located uptown, not in the North Pole. Do the elves just buy the toys now?"
"Yes, honey," she said, in complete and total contradiction of what she had said only moments ago. "The world's a bigger place now. They can't make all the toys for the growing population."
She seemed as annoyed as Missus Vonderhue, so I drifted off to my room to draw and be alone.
(69)
The mall is a big place when you're six. It's a scary place during the holidays -- for an adult, let alone a child.
"Mom?" I said. "Hey, mom?"
"What, honey?"
"Can I get a Burrito?" I said. "I really want a burrito. Can I get a chicken one? The spicey kind?"
She sighed. She was holding a zillion bags, it must've been. She tapped her foot. "We really should get the rest of this shopping done, we need to get home before it gets too late. But I am hungry."
She brought me to Bubba's Burrito's in the food court. They had the best burritos there. They had tacos, too, and they had nachos and chilli. My mouth was just watering thinking about it.
"Here, hold these," she said, giving me all the bags. Some were bigger than me. And as I stood there, cradling a zillion bags, that's when I saw him: the human bannana.
"It's the misguided prophet!" He yelled excitedly, jumping and pointing his finger at me. "Uncle, he's a heretic, just like you."
"Hey, kid," he said, stuffing a cheese-drenched tortilla in his mouth. "Question everything. Don't let the Man lie to ya, got it?"
"The man?" My mother said, turning around. "And who exactly is `the man'?"
"You know," he said, like a deer caught in headlights. "The man."
"The white man?"
"Hell, no," he said, obviously frustrated. "I swear, you goddamned white people take shit so personally. This is the twentith century, girl. Now, the man? The man's black and white. Fuck, he's green, for all I know. All those fuckers in high positions of power expecting us to just blindly accept all the bullshit they just keep shovelin' our way. Greedy, rich bastards -- that's who I'm talking about. The real people who run this country, control the media. Like the power-hungry mothafukas in the church who wrote that fuckin' Bible everyones so big on. It's just a game of power, man. It's all about control."
"You have such a mouth."
"Words of passion, my dear woman, words of passion," he said. "We've got to have the right to express ourselves. We all have the right to be free. No one should be up above us pointing which way we should go or lying to us to protect us or to please us. It's all bullshit. Take your education system, for example."
"My child goes to a good school."
"Bullshit, they're programming these kids these days. Memorizing words out of a book? That's not learnin'. If that's learnin', what these kids really oughta be taught is to learn how to learn. To question things, as I heard your little boy's been doin' here."
Mom looked down at me. "C'mon, hon, let's go."
"Hey, I'll shut up," he said. "Look, no need to leave, for cryin' out loud. I just get a little passionate about this shit."
"Shut up," she said to him, pointing a sharp figner his way. "Just shut the hell up."
He held up his hands, and the human bannana hid behind his one leg. "This is your Q-tip amigo signin' off. I swear. You stay, I'll leave."
She said nothing.
She grabbed the bags and placed a burritto in my one hand. then she grabbed my other hand and took me away.
I looked back at bannana-boy and the mutant Q-tip. "Keep up the questionin', brotha. The truth is to be found!" He yelled.
He held up two fingers as a peace sign. Even with the burrito in my hand, I was able to return it.
It seemed that my mother, with all the bags in her hands, was only able to lift one finger.
(69)
I was in the living room later on that evening, playing with my trucks with the yummy aftertase of the burritto still in my mouth. The excitement of having met someone who encouraged questioning things until you got a real answer. I'd hardly understood any of what that funny man had said, but I got a sense of power from it.
My father was nearby. He was watching the news. Well, it was on, but he seemed more interested in his newspaper in hand and his coffee cup beside him, and a cigar in-between his teeth. He reeked of cigars, and you could tell he was within ten feet whenever you caught that scent of Black-and-Mild.
The television hummed in the background, as I reflected on my conversation earlier in the day with my American History teacher:
"Another riot outside an abortion clinic today, were a mother was killed... as with the unborn baby... "
"Dad," I finally said, "have you ever actually seen Satan Claus?"
He looked up from his paper, and laid it on his lap. He took his cigar out of his mouth and blew out a puff of smoke. He didn't inhale; he said it was hazardous. "No, son. Why?"
"How then," I proposed, "do you know that he exists?"
He chewed on that one for a movement before responding, trying to form the words before they came tumbling out of his mouth. "The same way that we know God exists," he eventually said, and I knew from the look on his face that he wasn't at all satisfied with his explanation. That made two of us, I thought.
I raised an eyebrow, as perplexed as I was upset that he didn't have a better response. "How do we know that God exists?" I asked him.
"Well... the existence of the universe suggests a maker." He told me. "And so there must be a god of some sort. Likewise... you have a present underneath your tree on Christmas morning, so there must be a Santa Claus."
He put his cigar back in his mouth, apparently proud of the way he had handled that one as he went back to his paper. He didn’t see the irony in his statement.
Me? I wasn't finished.
"No... I mean, the things we believe in, dad… It’s just that, well, they don't really make all that much sense at all, you know? No one really knows - at least, I don't, and no one I talk to seems to know for sure. Stuff happens – like the universe being made and presents coming to be under the tree, but what put that stuff there, what's behind it all... couldn't there be another reason? Why are we so stuck on these ideas about why certain things happen and laugh at other ideas when we don't really know.... when no one really does?"
He put down the paper and looked at me, with a confused, almost repulsed look about his face. "What the hell are they teaching you kids in school? Christ!" He shook his head and looked straight at me with a grin. "Just believe, son. Don't question so much. You think way more than you should. Have faith. It's a hard thing to do, but in the long run... it's a lot easier."
The discussion I had with my father that night didn't settle well with me. Something just seemed wrong about it, unsettling about it. Was it possible that Santa Claus didn't exist, and if that, that a god didn't exist? Then how did the presents come to be under our tree, and how did we come to be on this earth? Were there other explanations for what was going on? If Santa and god were lies, so then what of the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy? My curiosity overtook me, and the questions wouldn't stop flowing, and for once in my short, little life I was determined to go with my own flow: I was determined to find the truth.
Just like the human bannana's uncle had suggested, I kept questioning.
As I began paying more attention to things going on around me, looking more closely, I got more and more suspicious of my parents. Perhaps it was the way in which they looked at me: those quick, nervous, intense glances. They almost seemed to fear me, and it didn't take me long to realize that whatever it was, they were most definitely concealing something they refused to tell me. I felt their wary eyes on me when I wasn't looking. They were lying to me, and that became more and more clear as time went on. If they were so uncertain of the existence of Mister Kringle, I wondered, than why was it they professed to know so much of him? It was indeed possible that they had gotten all the information from tall tales surrounding the Claus phenomenon, but that seemed unlikely.
After awhile, I realized that it seemed as though they were trying to make me believe as much as I could to the best of their abilities, as if it was for the purpose of protecting me in some way. Yet why were they trying to make me believe in such a silly lie? Did it conceal something greater; something more sinister in nature? What were they covering up, and why were they telling such tales?
I came to see it not only in my parents, but in other kids’ parents as well. My friends' parents gave their children the same wary eye, told lies – sometimes altered a bit from the ones my parents told me – yet, unlike me, these kids fell for it. They believed every word. Grown-ups don't lie, Piggy had said; they know everything.
This, too, began to seem a myth.
(69)
The TV blared one evening as my dad did the taxes at the kitchen table, looking lost, involved, and thoroughly frustrated:
"We live in a country that won't let us know the truth. The people in the positions of power use their authority and the `need for national security’ as ways to justify their silence regarding almost anything. They classify their acts to cover up their immoral footprints, and lie to the American people. As we hold these Holes in Our History in our minds, we fill them with that which we find logical, that which we hear or suspect, in an effort to make some sense out of it all. We do it to fulfill our desires for some needed coherency regarding what exactly is going on behind the scenes is `this great country’. Our imagination links things together, and the government laughs at our paranoid theories... but they put the holes there and hide all the pieces – what are we supposed to do? Blindly follow? Be unquestioning, subservient drones? Those holes shouldn't be there. It’s unethical and unlawful. We have the right to know. This government is supposed to be `by the people and for the people’. If they'd just open up and tell us the truth..."
"What a fucking nutball," dad said under his breath.
"What's a nutball?"
Dad thought about that for a moment. He laughed and looked at me. "I suppose it's redundant."
“Look, dad.... I know I‘ve been asking a lot of questions,” I said, approaching him with a cautious look about me. “But why do you do taxes?"
He put his pen down on the table, took off his round, thin-rimmed glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We all do taxes so we can pay the government money, most of which goes to pay for things we can't know about for reasons of national security."
"What's national security?"
"It the stuff they can't tell us because if we knew, our enemies would know, and then we wouldn't be in power because the bad guys would know the truth. It's a sacrifice we have to make as citizens of this country."
"Don't they have spies?"
"Yes, of course."
"And spy satellites, like eyes in the skies, that can see in top secret airports and things?"
"Well, yeah."
"Then our good government and bad governments can know about the stuff, but we can't?"
He shrugged. "Well... "
"I guess we’re not old enough, huh?"
He looked at me as if I'd just hit him with a cheap shot. It wasn't meant to be;Ii was dead serious.
"Son, they do their best to satisfy our wants and needs. They protect our country so we can live in a society - so we can have jobs to get food, shelter, and education. Never mind the fact that our president happens to be a blumbering, malfunctioning android."
"But it's our country... and the people are always complaining... so can't we change it so we like it? Can’t we do something about what we complain about? The teacher once said that our country’s by and for the people."
"Oh, that's a bunch of huey." He said. Then, after a moment: "don't tell your mother I said that, okay?"
"Okay." I said. "But why can't we change it, dad. Why? I wanna know."
"It's just the way things are, son. The way they've always been, and always will be. I mean, you've got to fight for what's impiortant to you, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. and if it's truth your after, then you put all your might into it and you'll find it. It's the lairs like the ones running this country that will see it blow up in their faces." He said.
"But that's not my choice," he added. "It's not really high on my importance scale. For me, the important thing is supporting my family, and if I have to work all these shitty jobs to pay the bills, if I have to do the stupid taxes to pay the government for whatever it is they do in their little black budgets... well, then that's fine with me, because my first priority isn't the country or even myself, but my family. I care about you guys so much I'm willing to sacrifice all else. There's ebauty in that."
I just stared at him.
He looked back at me frantically. "No, really, I mean it." he said. "There really is ebauty in that. You may not see it now, but... I dunno. As bad as it may seem to you in your young age, and as stupid as things in this world - and this country - seem to be, we live in the best country in the world. You'll understand when you're older. Now... now go play with your trucks and let daddy do his taxes."
(69)
Slowly and slowly the world I once knew began to crack before me, and as the shards fell away a greater, more vivid, perhaps more truthful picture seemed to emerge. Something the childhood world of lies had concealed. I wanted to know more, but my parents, much like my teacher, it seemed, were hopeless. They were either active members in some conspiracy or hopeless pawns in some horrific game. So I tried the only other person in my family that might know.
I approached my big brother one day and questioned him. It would be a conversation that would be more revealing than I ever could have anticipated – and much more revealing then he had intended. When you catch people off guard, throw a shocking question at them, certain vital truths seem to leak through. My net was up, and as I paid close attention, I caught those truths kept from me and began to use them to piece together the puzzle in my mind.
"Have you ever known mom and dad to lie?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No."
"What about Santa Claus?"
His face dropped.
"What is it?" I asked him.
He looked at me straight in the eye. "I can't tell you. It's a secret."
"Have mom and dad been lying to me?" I asked straightforwardly.
He hesitated. "You'll find out when you're older. Don't think so much, bro, just enjoy childhood."
Ignorance -- he desired my ignorance. My brother was just like the rest of them, trying to keep my mind numb and pliable. They wouldn’t help me understand, for they saw me as unworthy for such information. I only had myself, and I supposed then that it had truly always been that way. I was not blind like all the others, I saw what was happening - indeed, a story began to form slowly. A wild one, but one I began to accept as true.
My suspicions had been correct.
The parents of the world were working with Santa Claus. It was a conspiracy against children. Just think: how else could Santa keep an eye on you every day and every night, knowing when you're sleeping and when you're awake?
When the children reached a certain age they were initiated into the conspiracy. My brother had already reached that level. Me and other kids my age were still being lied to. Bannana-boy, there was still hope for him. His Q-tip brother? He was probably a lead member in the resistence. Piggy? What a pawn.
But why? Now that I knew there was a conspiracy, what was it's purpose?
Why were they controlling the minds of children?
I suspected the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and all of that sort were also part of the grand scheme. Then, unavoidably, another piece seemed to fall into the puzzle, working it's way in very easily and fitting perfectly: the god factor. It seemed to linger throughout the ages. I saw it in many places, but it seemed to have literally invaded the mind of senior citizens. The elderly seemed to be very attached to the idea of god - almost blindly so. It was as if they needed to believe in something greater than them. It was as if the childhood Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and Tooth Farie was exchanged in adulthood for a new trinity, just as ludicrus: the father, son and holy ghost. If Santa was the conspiracy of childhood, perhaps god was the conspiracy of adulthood.
"Do you believe in Santa Claus?" I asked my grandmother one day when we were alone.
"Of course." She said. It was an obvious lie. I checked every facial expression and every movement.
"Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?"
"Of course I do. What is it, honey?" I judged her expressions and movements again. They seemed consistent with the latter.
"Do you believe in God?"
She stopped. "Never question my faith." She said it angrily. Almost psychotically. As in, `how dare you?’ That sort of tone. She just eyed me awhile and went back to doing dishes, that scowl deepening on her aged, lined face. I did the last of the dishes, dried my hands with the towel to the side of me, and walked off into the living room and thought. As much as the parents of the world were lodging a conspiracy against the children, someone else was plotting a conspiracy against adults, specifically senior citizens. Who would do such a thing? Who was in power to do such a thing?
The answer came immediate and clear, and I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before: The government.
So now I knew who. I still didn't know why – yet I was determined to find out.
I didn't hold a grudge against my parents, for I had become certain that this conspiracy against children had been going on for decades. They were initiated into the lie just as their parents were, probably on until antiquity. They grew up excepting this as being the way things were, not questioning as I had found the time to do. Now I even found that a conspiracy was set against the adults, a conspiracy concerning God, most likely perpetuated by a secret government group, a small group of human beings who were gifted with knowing the full truth. Yet, just perhaps they, too, were being deceived by something even higher than themselves.
(69)
I was ready that Christmas. Ready to catch Santa in the act and end this charade. I had gotten my father's handgun from the cabinet and loaded it with bullets. I held it close to my jammies as I lay in bed, staring at how the light from outside cast shadows on the ceiling. The dancing, almost hypnotic shadows drawn by the blinking Christmas lights. The gun felt cold against my hand.
I heard a noise in the hallway.
Thumping on the roof.
And someone saying rather loudly, "ho, ho, ho."
I carefully got out of bed, let my feet fall onto the carpet floor and walked slowly to the door. Every pore of my body was oozing a cold sweat. I peeked underneath the door's crack and surveyed outside. No one was in the hallway: Santa must've made his way into the living room, where the tree lay. He must've not used the chimney but instead climbed through our bathroom window – the only window of the house that didn't have a lock.
I touched the doorknob, twisting it slowly. I peered out the door. I looked at my parents' room right next door. It was closed. I could hear the radio playing in the background. A Christmas song just ended, and someone had called in for a request.
"Hi. This is All-Thought Radio, Merry Christmas."
"Yeah... I just wanted to say something in the spirit of the season, which is a Christian rip-off a pagan holiday, by the way..."
Down the hallway I saw the oven, beyond that the kitchen. I climbed behind the oven and peered through the kitchen into the living room. There he stood in a big red suit – and he was much too big to have been able to fit down the chimney.
"When we lay unquestioning faith in something – such as the government, a god, Santa Claus, or some stupid idea – we willingly give up our power and will to that which we hold undying faith in. We blind ourselves in the intense concentration and focus we have on our own subjective fantasies... and become slaves to them."
My mother was there as well, and I'd guessed my father was probably in bed. He filled the stockings carefully. I was confused: my mother knew Santa Claus all along, and my dad had never met him? I smelled a rat. A big, red and white, stinky, conspiratorial, jolly old rat. Then it happened.
The moment I'll never forget.
"That `god' in which we place that unquestionable trust in can do whatever it wants as long as it feeds it's believers enough with what might be seen as gifts to hold their veil of ignorance in place. Blind faith is slavery..."
He kissed my mother's lips, and they held it there as casual as can be. Their arms wrapped around each other. They held each other tight.
My hand fastened on the trigger.
The bastard.
"... but we must realize that these gods aren't really gods, they're just like us, but wearing clever masks that the ignorant fall for. It's only our belief that gives them power. They'd better learn to confess their lies and quit trying to throw their reign of control over us, because even at the lowest level these manipulators must face a fundamental law in the universe: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction..."
The conspiracy was deeper than I had ever dared to imagine. My mom was having an affair with Santa. I had to bring this lie to a close. End the lies, end the conspiracy, end the madness that suffocated this world.
"... kind of like the law of karma... "
I pointed the gun. Then I yelled like a crazed maniac. My mother's mouth fell open - was it the gun, or the sudden realization that I knew?
"... all that you put out comes back to you, everything goes as if in circles... "
Santa held his arms out. A cigar fell from his hand to the floor, and rolled until it came to a stop and hit the front wheels of my new toy truck.
A shot rang out. Santa made a gurgling, gasping noise and something behind him exploded. It was an apple. there was applesause everywhere.
Mom fell back against the hard brick wall beside the fireplace and screamed. As for Santa: what was white in his red suit drowned in an ocean of red.
Over mom's screams, I sneered at him and growled: "Merry fuckin' Christmas."
".... and so the lie you make, or the lie you perpetuate, is doomed to blow up in your face. This is your Q-tip amigo signin' off."
a Heartwarming Christmas Story
for incredibly disturbed individuals,
by Rewired.
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Raves for Rewired’s Good Tidings…
“A Christmas Tale of Epic Proportions… move over mister Red-Nosed Reindeer, step aside A Christmas Carol, Good Tidings is the new and true tale of Christmas…”
— Society for Compulsive Liars.
“What were we thinking?”
— Tim’s parents in regards to the night of his conception.
“I think it was a wonderful story [hic] I [belch] think we’ve got the next Stephen King here. Read Good Tidings and you’ll never again [fart] experience such a strange mixture of warm enlightenment, [incomprehensible noise], confusion, and terrifying thrills… spare a quarter?”
— Drunken, illiterate vagrant midget man that smells like pickles.
“This boy’s story is all the guys at the office talk about. He’s even made our Annual Target For Assassination. I think he’s on to us. You could read this story, Good Tidings, but I’d have to kill you.”
— Mr. X of Secret Government Program plotting to Dominate the World.
“He makes me want to vomit.”
— Santa.
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I had just recently turned six, and it was the last day of first grade before Christmas break. The teacher was up in front, gabbing away about American History, a topic no one but a few kiss-ups in the class cared to pay any attention to. My mind was following it’s usual habit of wandering, and though I was perfectly content staring out the window for the moment what I truly desired was to go home. I wanted more than anything to be alone in my room, drawing some pictures and sipping the hot chocolate grandma was always so kind to make me.
It didn't take long, though, before I began to get horribly bored. Not only that, but I was growing very agitated in regard to my behind, which was growing all the more numb with every passing second I remained sitting in that chair. Wasn't this class taking longer than usual? It seemed as though we'd been there for hours. What was it she was gabbing about, anyway?
"The Civil War began in 1861, and by the time it was over the African Americans were no longer considered slaves, and were finally recognized as free individuals. They were finally permitted the same rights as the whites."
At times such as these – at a constant, in fact – ideas and questions flowed into my head which I was afraid to verbalize. I was, of course, considered an ignorant child and I thought asking too many questions would seem far too crazy or silly – especially the questions that always ran amok in my head. I’d always figured that the answers to such questions were probably so common knowledge that to ask them would be letting everyone know I was a fool. I had figured that I was, in all probability, just the ignorant child that they seemed to treat me as – perhaps even more so than my peers – and so I stood silent amidst the screaming voices in my mind.
I stood silent, that is, until that day in class. My mind even more numb in it’s boredom than my butt was in that chair, I decided I had nothing to loose. I was here to learn, and I was learning nothing of interest so far. I could take it no longer, so I decided to do what I had always wanted to do but never had the courage to do – I let my heart and mind run my mouth.
"Was it right to have blacks as slaves?" I found myself asking.
"No!" She said, obviously annoyed. Her reaction was quite swift; the kind of reaction I'd expect. By the look in her face, I felt that she misunderstood me and my question, however. I decided to go on, regardless.
"Then why did us white people do it? Did we think it was right back then, or was it right and then it became bad?"
"It wasn't right at all.” She said, shaking her head and saying the words slowly and digging her eyes into me so that I would get the message clearly. “They merely thought it was right, because they knew of no other way to live. They had a certain ignorance – yet don't let that pass as an excuse, because it's not."
"But it was so wrong you'd think they woulda saw it was wrong.” I said. I still wasn’t perfectly clear on the topic. “Did it used to be right, and then change to being bad, though?"
"Everyone has different beliefs,” she said, a bit calmer now. “Even those same people may have different beliefs at different times."
"Then which ones are right?" I asked. I was as confused as ever. "The beliefs I have now... that everyone has equal rights… am I wrong?"
"No one really knows, Benjamin." She smiled. "You're a very inquisitive young man today, and I appreciate that. But we do have a lot more to cover until we go home. If you have any questions, please feel free to stay after class – I'd be happy to speak with you privately."
It wasn't much longer until the bell rang. I stood up, hoping to regain sensation in the lower half of my body. What I received was the sensation of needles being poked into every pore of my skin below my naval. It subsided slowly but surely. I awaited the departure of the rest of the class so I could finally approach the teacher with the questions that had been building up in me for so long. I thought that I could, perhaps, even get some reasonable answers. At that time I figured any answer would be satisfactory, but my experience that day would help me realize how careful I was towards believing anything unquestionably. I never knew how picky I was until the conversation Misses Vonderhue and I had that day.
"So,” she said to me, leaning on her desk as I approached her with my book bag thrown over my shoulder. She was holding a deep red apple one of the stuck ups had brought her that morning. “Why all these questions all of a sudden?"
"Just wondering," I said, shrugging shyly. "I didn't do anything bad, did I?"
"No!" She said, smiling and patting my head with her free hand. "No, child. Don't worry. Of all the children in this classroom, a quiet little boy like you isn't one of much concern. You're very intelligent and creative. Santa won't be putting lumps of coal in your stocking -- unlike some of the bad little girls and boys in my class."
Her smile seemed to remain on her face as she walked back around the desk, sat in her chair, and closed her top drawer after putting in a pen. She was about to put the apple to her mouth when I just couldn't hold it any longer.
"What's good for you isn't good for Debbie's mommy."
She looked up at me. Her mouth was still open. The apple, uneaten. "What?"
"You said last week that abortion was killing. That it was murder. Debbie's mommy said it was the right of the lady who was gonna have the child weather or not she wants to keep it. She said it's not killing, you said it is. You say it's wrong, and she says it's right."
"What's your point?" She asked curiously. She looked as if she was in shock, as if I’d drawn a knife on her or something. She looked offended, wanting to strike back but suddenly very fearful of me. "Everyone has different view, Ben."
"Then there isn't a good and bad for everyone?"
"Well," she stumbled, "...generally, yes, there is a right and wrong for everyone."
"So is abortion wrong?" I asked. "And the electric chair – is that wrong, too?"
"Yes! Well… for me it is!" She said, almost yelling now. She held onto the apple tightly now, and pressed it onto the table to lift herself a bit up off the chair. She took a deep breath and leaned over the desk. She seemed to lean forward every time she wanted to get a point across and get your full attention. It worked, too. She had very striking eyes; even as a young child I knew she was a charismatic woman. "Look, no one knows who draws the lines between good and evil, all right? We all try to do it ourselves."
"What about what’s real and what’s not real?” I asked. Questions were spilling out of my head like a fountain. “If people aren’t sure about the lines between right and wrong, what about what’s real and what’s not?”
“Well, we don’t really know. Not all of it. Not for sure. But we have a good idea.”
“But then your ideas are really no more useful or right than mine, or Debbie’s mommy, or my mommy.” I said, but it was more in the tone of a question than a statement. “And then Santa and god don't know the lines, either? Or the government?"
"Benjamin," she said, swallowing hard, looking down at her one fiddling hand, at the apple in her other, and then back up at me again, "you'll miss your bus.”
I put my hands in my pockets nervously, feeling defeated. I kicked the tiles below my feet lightly and looked at the ground.
“Okay, Missus Vonderhue,” I said, and turned to walk away.
“Benjamin?” She said, as my back was to her and I was on my way out the doorway. She threw me the apple, and I caught it. “Have a Merry Christmas, okay, dear?"
I nodded. I made it to the bus just before the doors closed.
(69)
"You sure ask lots of silly questions."
I had been staring out the bus window, unaware that anyone ahd even sat beside me in the seat. When I looekd voer, though, I saw a small black boy in a yellow rain coat. I never really talked to this kid before, but i recognized him from class. He always wore a rain coat, even in the dead of summer, even when it wasn't raining. He was little and skinny. Some of the bullys in class called him bannana-boy.
"They're not silly," I told him.
"You're like my uncle," he said. "He's a skinny man with a big beard and a huge afro. Mama says he looks like a mutant Q-tip. Dad calls him the heretic. That's what you are, kinda, a heretic."
"Heretics are supposed to be evil, aren't they?"
"Not evil, just misled. You seem nice and all. And well-meaning. Like a... like," he looked frustrated. He turned to the bus driver. "Hey, Miss Bus Driver Lady?"
"What?" She snapped, annoyed.
"What's the words for a, a like, a nice heretic? One that's not trying to do harm or nuthin', he just doesn't know what he's doing? Led the wrong way or somethin' like that?"
"Um... let's say... a misguided prophet." She said. "Now go away and let me hate my job."
"Okay." He said, and turned to me. "That's what you are, a misguided poffit."
"I just get confused sometimes. It seems like adults just like telling us things that don't make any real sense at all. Like the things they say just don't fit."
An oversized kid, they called him Piggy Milano, he turned around from the seat in front of me and looked me in the eyes. "Not my dad. He knows everything."
"Nobody knows everything."
"Adults do." He said. "Don't you know anything, stupid?"
"Shut up." Bannana-boy said.
"Why don't you peel off that raincoat, bannana-butt?"
"Why don't you get a tan?"
Then Piggy just turned back around. Bannana-boy just grinned. I just shook my head and turned to look back out the window. It was raining now. The outside looked sad and muddy through the blurs the rain left on the window.
But banna-boy? He just wouldn't quit.
"I guess you're right," he said. "Adults don't make any sense lots of the times. Like my mom, she says we came from storks."
"Storks?"
"Yeah. They're like a kind of a bird. Like a pelican, I guess. She says that this bird, he brought me to her. It just doesn't make sense, though. I mean, where did the bird get me from?"
"God." Piggy said, turning around again. "You guys aren't very smart, are you?"
"Then were did god get us from?" Banna-boy said, staring dead into him.
"God made us."
"And who made god?" I yelled, quite irritated. "If god made the birds and made us for the birds to carry, who made god? It just doesn't make any sense. And your dad doesn't know everything. Nobody knows everything. Sometimes I think nobody really knows anything at all."
"My dad does so know everything. You're going to hell." Piggy said. "You want to got to hell when you die?"
A kid directly across from yus burst into laughter. "You don't go to hell when you die, dummy."
"Yeah, huh," Piggy shot back at him. The poor kid, he almost looked hurt. "My dad said so."
"I dont care what your pop says," he laughed. "You don't go to hell when you die."
"Really?" Bannana-boy said.
"Yeah, my dad says his work is hell, and he's not dead. He says it pays the bills, though, and that the money makes it good enough for him."
The bus driver peeped through the rear-view. "This place where your dad works, hell?"
"Yeah?"
"Do they get Christmas bonuses?"
(69)
After getting home, I was pretty sad. I was pretty quiet as I was munching on the chocolate chip cookie my mother had given to me before supper, as she had explained, `against better judgment’. I had been thinking about Santa, and the fact that our chimney is small, and that some people don't even have chimneys. I then asked my mother a question that, to her, must've seemed to come out of nowhere.
“Mommy, why does Santa use the chimney?” I asked. "Why doesn't he just use the door?"
She had been off in her own world while stirring the beef stew and had hardly noticed that I’d still been standing there. She stopped for a moment. Without looking down at me, she said, "sometimes, he does use the door."
"Really?"
"Sure." She said. "Santa has his elves make the best skelaton keys. They can get in anywhere."
This satisfied me to a degree, but the more I thought about it the less it all made sense. I finally realized something, and it seemed to my tiny mind to be the grandest of revelations: my mother and father thought that I was a mindless, ignorant little boy.
She picked up the apple on the counter. "Where did this come from, hon?"
"The teacher gave it to me."
"Huh," she said. "When I was in school, it was the kids who gave teachers the apples."
As I stood by my mother by the stove, I began to recall the plaguing confusion that had encompassed me all throughout my six years of life – confusion that my parents never ceased to perpetuate. For instance, my parents declared that magic was superstition, ghosts and fairies were not real, and monsters were mere fantasy, and therefore there was nothing to be afraid of at night. It wasn’t a hairy brown creature tapping on your window; it was the wind that had blown a branch against the glass. That wasn’t a little demon creature sitting on the chair by your desk; it was a clump of laundry or a rolled-up blanket. The creaks were due to the houses’ age. There was nothing out to get me. It was merely a nightmare. Dreams couldn’t hurt me unless I let them.
Though I may have disbelieved all of that deep down, I could have accepted it much easier back then and had become much more satisfied with such proclamations if only such assurances hadn’t lied in direct contradiction to other `assurances.’ Though my parents had maintained throughout the years that monsters weren’t real and magic did not exist, they were open to the fact that every Christmas a ripe jolly old elf slipped down our chimney – a chimney which was far too narrow for me, let alone a big fat man dressed in red and white with a bag full of toys - and placed presents under our housed tree and stuck goodies in socks we hung by thumb-tacks up above the fireplace. The big guy had little helpers, of course - elves, as it were - who my parents professed `made' the toys that were given to me, even though it was clear that they had brand names.
She wiped her hands with her towel, threw it on the counter, took the apple and went towards the coffee table in the livign room. "I leave it for your father," she said, "a little cinamin and he'll be in heaven."
As she was on her way to the coffe table by his usual chair in the living room, though, I stopped her. I looked up at her, munching on a chocolate chip cookie, and tugged at her shirt. "Elves make the toys, right ma?"
"Of course, honey," she said with a laugh, stopping in her tracks and looking down at me. She put the apple on the mantle above the fireplace. “Why else would Santa need elves?"
I was about to bring up the skelaton keys, but I didn't.
"Why do the toys have brand names, then?" I said. "Gerald's father works for a toy factoryl, and he's never talked about elves working with him. And it's located uptown, not in the North Pole. Do the elves just buy the toys now?"
"Yes, honey," she said, in complete and total contradiction of what she had said only moments ago. "The world's a bigger place now. They can't make all the toys for the growing population."
She seemed as annoyed as Missus Vonderhue, so I drifted off to my room to draw and be alone.
(69)
The mall is a big place when you're six. It's a scary place during the holidays -- for an adult, let alone a child.
"Mom?" I said. "Hey, mom?"
"What, honey?"
"Can I get a Burrito?" I said. "I really want a burrito. Can I get a chicken one? The spicey kind?"
She sighed. She was holding a zillion bags, it must've been. She tapped her foot. "We really should get the rest of this shopping done, we need to get home before it gets too late. But I am hungry."
She brought me to Bubba's Burrito's in the food court. They had the best burritos there. They had tacos, too, and they had nachos and chilli. My mouth was just watering thinking about it.
"Here, hold these," she said, giving me all the bags. Some were bigger than me. And as I stood there, cradling a zillion bags, that's when I saw him: the human bannana.
"It's the misguided prophet!" He yelled excitedly, jumping and pointing his finger at me. "Uncle, he's a heretic, just like you."
"Hey, kid," he said, stuffing a cheese-drenched tortilla in his mouth. "Question everything. Don't let the Man lie to ya, got it?"
"The man?" My mother said, turning around. "And who exactly is `the man'?"
"You know," he said, like a deer caught in headlights. "The man."
"The white man?"
"Hell, no," he said, obviously frustrated. "I swear, you goddamned white people take shit so personally. This is the twentith century, girl. Now, the man? The man's black and white. Fuck, he's green, for all I know. All those fuckers in high positions of power expecting us to just blindly accept all the bullshit they just keep shovelin' our way. Greedy, rich bastards -- that's who I'm talking about. The real people who run this country, control the media. Like the power-hungry mothafukas in the church who wrote that fuckin' Bible everyones so big on. It's just a game of power, man. It's all about control."
"You have such a mouth."
"Words of passion, my dear woman, words of passion," he said. "We've got to have the right to express ourselves. We all have the right to be free. No one should be up above us pointing which way we should go or lying to us to protect us or to please us. It's all bullshit. Take your education system, for example."
"My child goes to a good school."
"Bullshit, they're programming these kids these days. Memorizing words out of a book? That's not learnin'. If that's learnin', what these kids really oughta be taught is to learn how to learn. To question things, as I heard your little boy's been doin' here."
Mom looked down at me. "C'mon, hon, let's go."
"Hey, I'll shut up," he said. "Look, no need to leave, for cryin' out loud. I just get a little passionate about this shit."
"Shut up," she said to him, pointing a sharp figner his way. "Just shut the hell up."
He held up his hands, and the human bannana hid behind his one leg. "This is your Q-tip amigo signin' off. I swear. You stay, I'll leave."
She said nothing.
She grabbed the bags and placed a burritto in my one hand. then she grabbed my other hand and took me away.
I looked back at bannana-boy and the mutant Q-tip. "Keep up the questionin', brotha. The truth is to be found!" He yelled.
He held up two fingers as a peace sign. Even with the burrito in my hand, I was able to return it.
It seemed that my mother, with all the bags in her hands, was only able to lift one finger.
(69)
I was in the living room later on that evening, playing with my trucks with the yummy aftertase of the burritto still in my mouth. The excitement of having met someone who encouraged questioning things until you got a real answer. I'd hardly understood any of what that funny man had said, but I got a sense of power from it.
My father was nearby. He was watching the news. Well, it was on, but he seemed more interested in his newspaper in hand and his coffee cup beside him, and a cigar in-between his teeth. He reeked of cigars, and you could tell he was within ten feet whenever you caught that scent of Black-and-Mild.
The television hummed in the background, as I reflected on my conversation earlier in the day with my American History teacher:
"Another riot outside an abortion clinic today, were a mother was killed... as with the unborn baby... "
"Dad," I finally said, "have you ever actually seen Satan Claus?"
He looked up from his paper, and laid it on his lap. He took his cigar out of his mouth and blew out a puff of smoke. He didn't inhale; he said it was hazardous. "No, son. Why?"
"How then," I proposed, "do you know that he exists?"
He chewed on that one for a movement before responding, trying to form the words before they came tumbling out of his mouth. "The same way that we know God exists," he eventually said, and I knew from the look on his face that he wasn't at all satisfied with his explanation. That made two of us, I thought.
I raised an eyebrow, as perplexed as I was upset that he didn't have a better response. "How do we know that God exists?" I asked him.
"Well... the existence of the universe suggests a maker." He told me. "And so there must be a god of some sort. Likewise... you have a present underneath your tree on Christmas morning, so there must be a Santa Claus."
He put his cigar back in his mouth, apparently proud of the way he had handled that one as he went back to his paper. He didn’t see the irony in his statement.
Me? I wasn't finished.
"No... I mean, the things we believe in, dad… It’s just that, well, they don't really make all that much sense at all, you know? No one really knows - at least, I don't, and no one I talk to seems to know for sure. Stuff happens – like the universe being made and presents coming to be under the tree, but what put that stuff there, what's behind it all... couldn't there be another reason? Why are we so stuck on these ideas about why certain things happen and laugh at other ideas when we don't really know.... when no one really does?"
He put down the paper and looked at me, with a confused, almost repulsed look about his face. "What the hell are they teaching you kids in school? Christ!" He shook his head and looked straight at me with a grin. "Just believe, son. Don't question so much. You think way more than you should. Have faith. It's a hard thing to do, but in the long run... it's a lot easier."
The discussion I had with my father that night didn't settle well with me. Something just seemed wrong about it, unsettling about it. Was it possible that Santa Claus didn't exist, and if that, that a god didn't exist? Then how did the presents come to be under our tree, and how did we come to be on this earth? Were there other explanations for what was going on? If Santa and god were lies, so then what of the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy? My curiosity overtook me, and the questions wouldn't stop flowing, and for once in my short, little life I was determined to go with my own flow: I was determined to find the truth.
Just like the human bannana's uncle had suggested, I kept questioning.
As I began paying more attention to things going on around me, looking more closely, I got more and more suspicious of my parents. Perhaps it was the way in which they looked at me: those quick, nervous, intense glances. They almost seemed to fear me, and it didn't take me long to realize that whatever it was, they were most definitely concealing something they refused to tell me. I felt their wary eyes on me when I wasn't looking. They were lying to me, and that became more and more clear as time went on. If they were so uncertain of the existence of Mister Kringle, I wondered, than why was it they professed to know so much of him? It was indeed possible that they had gotten all the information from tall tales surrounding the Claus phenomenon, but that seemed unlikely.
After awhile, I realized that it seemed as though they were trying to make me believe as much as I could to the best of their abilities, as if it was for the purpose of protecting me in some way. Yet why were they trying to make me believe in such a silly lie? Did it conceal something greater; something more sinister in nature? What were they covering up, and why were they telling such tales?
I came to see it not only in my parents, but in other kids’ parents as well. My friends' parents gave their children the same wary eye, told lies – sometimes altered a bit from the ones my parents told me – yet, unlike me, these kids fell for it. They believed every word. Grown-ups don't lie, Piggy had said; they know everything.
This, too, began to seem a myth.
(69)
The TV blared one evening as my dad did the taxes at the kitchen table, looking lost, involved, and thoroughly frustrated:
"We live in a country that won't let us know the truth. The people in the positions of power use their authority and the `need for national security’ as ways to justify their silence regarding almost anything. They classify their acts to cover up their immoral footprints, and lie to the American people. As we hold these Holes in Our History in our minds, we fill them with that which we find logical, that which we hear or suspect, in an effort to make some sense out of it all. We do it to fulfill our desires for some needed coherency regarding what exactly is going on behind the scenes is `this great country’. Our imagination links things together, and the government laughs at our paranoid theories... but they put the holes there and hide all the pieces – what are we supposed to do? Blindly follow? Be unquestioning, subservient drones? Those holes shouldn't be there. It’s unethical and unlawful. We have the right to know. This government is supposed to be `by the people and for the people’. If they'd just open up and tell us the truth..."
"What a fucking nutball," dad said under his breath.
"What's a nutball?"
Dad thought about that for a moment. He laughed and looked at me. "I suppose it's redundant."
“Look, dad.... I know I‘ve been asking a lot of questions,” I said, approaching him with a cautious look about me. “But why do you do taxes?"
He put his pen down on the table, took off his round, thin-rimmed glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We all do taxes so we can pay the government money, most of which goes to pay for things we can't know about for reasons of national security."
"What's national security?"
"It the stuff they can't tell us because if we knew, our enemies would know, and then we wouldn't be in power because the bad guys would know the truth. It's a sacrifice we have to make as citizens of this country."
"Don't they have spies?"
"Yes, of course."
"And spy satellites, like eyes in the skies, that can see in top secret airports and things?"
"Well, yeah."
"Then our good government and bad governments can know about the stuff, but we can't?"
He shrugged. "Well... "
"I guess we’re not old enough, huh?"
He looked at me as if I'd just hit him with a cheap shot. It wasn't meant to be;Ii was dead serious.
"Son, they do their best to satisfy our wants and needs. They protect our country so we can live in a society - so we can have jobs to get food, shelter, and education. Never mind the fact that our president happens to be a blumbering, malfunctioning android."
"But it's our country... and the people are always complaining... so can't we change it so we like it? Can’t we do something about what we complain about? The teacher once said that our country’s by and for the people."
"Oh, that's a bunch of huey." He said. Then, after a moment: "don't tell your mother I said that, okay?"
"Okay." I said. "But why can't we change it, dad. Why? I wanna know."
"It's just the way things are, son. The way they've always been, and always will be. I mean, you've got to fight for what's impiortant to you, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. and if it's truth your after, then you put all your might into it and you'll find it. It's the lairs like the ones running this country that will see it blow up in their faces." He said.
"But that's not my choice," he added. "It's not really high on my importance scale. For me, the important thing is supporting my family, and if I have to work all these shitty jobs to pay the bills, if I have to do the stupid taxes to pay the government for whatever it is they do in their little black budgets... well, then that's fine with me, because my first priority isn't the country or even myself, but my family. I care about you guys so much I'm willing to sacrifice all else. There's ebauty in that."
I just stared at him.
He looked back at me frantically. "No, really, I mean it." he said. "There really is ebauty in that. You may not see it now, but... I dunno. As bad as it may seem to you in your young age, and as stupid as things in this world - and this country - seem to be, we live in the best country in the world. You'll understand when you're older. Now... now go play with your trucks and let daddy do his taxes."
(69)
Slowly and slowly the world I once knew began to crack before me, and as the shards fell away a greater, more vivid, perhaps more truthful picture seemed to emerge. Something the childhood world of lies had concealed. I wanted to know more, but my parents, much like my teacher, it seemed, were hopeless. They were either active members in some conspiracy or hopeless pawns in some horrific game. So I tried the only other person in my family that might know.
I approached my big brother one day and questioned him. It would be a conversation that would be more revealing than I ever could have anticipated – and much more revealing then he had intended. When you catch people off guard, throw a shocking question at them, certain vital truths seem to leak through. My net was up, and as I paid close attention, I caught those truths kept from me and began to use them to piece together the puzzle in my mind.
"Have you ever known mom and dad to lie?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No."
"What about Santa Claus?"
His face dropped.
"What is it?" I asked him.
He looked at me straight in the eye. "I can't tell you. It's a secret."
"Have mom and dad been lying to me?" I asked straightforwardly.
He hesitated. "You'll find out when you're older. Don't think so much, bro, just enjoy childhood."
Ignorance -- he desired my ignorance. My brother was just like the rest of them, trying to keep my mind numb and pliable. They wouldn’t help me understand, for they saw me as unworthy for such information. I only had myself, and I supposed then that it had truly always been that way. I was not blind like all the others, I saw what was happening - indeed, a story began to form slowly. A wild one, but one I began to accept as true.
My suspicions had been correct.
The parents of the world were working with Santa Claus. It was a conspiracy against children. Just think: how else could Santa keep an eye on you every day and every night, knowing when you're sleeping and when you're awake?
When the children reached a certain age they were initiated into the conspiracy. My brother had already reached that level. Me and other kids my age were still being lied to. Bannana-boy, there was still hope for him. His Q-tip brother? He was probably a lead member in the resistence. Piggy? What a pawn.
But why? Now that I knew there was a conspiracy, what was it's purpose?
Why were they controlling the minds of children?
I suspected the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and all of that sort were also part of the grand scheme. Then, unavoidably, another piece seemed to fall into the puzzle, working it's way in very easily and fitting perfectly: the god factor. It seemed to linger throughout the ages. I saw it in many places, but it seemed to have literally invaded the mind of senior citizens. The elderly seemed to be very attached to the idea of god - almost blindly so. It was as if they needed to believe in something greater than them. It was as if the childhood Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and Tooth Farie was exchanged in adulthood for a new trinity, just as ludicrus: the father, son and holy ghost. If Santa was the conspiracy of childhood, perhaps god was the conspiracy of adulthood.
"Do you believe in Santa Claus?" I asked my grandmother one day when we were alone.
"Of course." She said. It was an obvious lie. I checked every facial expression and every movement.
"Do you believe in the Easter Bunny?"
"Of course I do. What is it, honey?" I judged her expressions and movements again. They seemed consistent with the latter.
"Do you believe in God?"
She stopped. "Never question my faith." She said it angrily. Almost psychotically. As in, `how dare you?’ That sort of tone. She just eyed me awhile and went back to doing dishes, that scowl deepening on her aged, lined face. I did the last of the dishes, dried my hands with the towel to the side of me, and walked off into the living room and thought. As much as the parents of the world were lodging a conspiracy against the children, someone else was plotting a conspiracy against adults, specifically senior citizens. Who would do such a thing? Who was in power to do such a thing?
The answer came immediate and clear, and I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before: The government.
So now I knew who. I still didn't know why – yet I was determined to find out.
I didn't hold a grudge against my parents, for I had become certain that this conspiracy against children had been going on for decades. They were initiated into the lie just as their parents were, probably on until antiquity. They grew up excepting this as being the way things were, not questioning as I had found the time to do. Now I even found that a conspiracy was set against the adults, a conspiracy concerning God, most likely perpetuated by a secret government group, a small group of human beings who were gifted with knowing the full truth. Yet, just perhaps they, too, were being deceived by something even higher than themselves.
(69)
I was ready that Christmas. Ready to catch Santa in the act and end this charade. I had gotten my father's handgun from the cabinet and loaded it with bullets. I held it close to my jammies as I lay in bed, staring at how the light from outside cast shadows on the ceiling. The dancing, almost hypnotic shadows drawn by the blinking Christmas lights. The gun felt cold against my hand.
I heard a noise in the hallway.
Thumping on the roof.
And someone saying rather loudly, "ho, ho, ho."
I carefully got out of bed, let my feet fall onto the carpet floor and walked slowly to the door. Every pore of my body was oozing a cold sweat. I peeked underneath the door's crack and surveyed outside. No one was in the hallway: Santa must've made his way into the living room, where the tree lay. He must've not used the chimney but instead climbed through our bathroom window – the only window of the house that didn't have a lock.
I touched the doorknob, twisting it slowly. I peered out the door. I looked at my parents' room right next door. It was closed. I could hear the radio playing in the background. A Christmas song just ended, and someone had called in for a request.
"Hi. This is All-Thought Radio, Merry Christmas."
"Yeah... I just wanted to say something in the spirit of the season, which is a Christian rip-off a pagan holiday, by the way..."
Down the hallway I saw the oven, beyond that the kitchen. I climbed behind the oven and peered through the kitchen into the living room. There he stood in a big red suit – and he was much too big to have been able to fit down the chimney.
"When we lay unquestioning faith in something – such as the government, a god, Santa Claus, or some stupid idea – we willingly give up our power and will to that which we hold undying faith in. We blind ourselves in the intense concentration and focus we have on our own subjective fantasies... and become slaves to them."
My mother was there as well, and I'd guessed my father was probably in bed. He filled the stockings carefully. I was confused: my mother knew Santa Claus all along, and my dad had never met him? I smelled a rat. A big, red and white, stinky, conspiratorial, jolly old rat. Then it happened.
The moment I'll never forget.
"That `god' in which we place that unquestionable trust in can do whatever it wants as long as it feeds it's believers enough with what might be seen as gifts to hold their veil of ignorance in place. Blind faith is slavery..."
He kissed my mother's lips, and they held it there as casual as can be. Their arms wrapped around each other. They held each other tight.
My hand fastened on the trigger.
The bastard.
"... but we must realize that these gods aren't really gods, they're just like us, but wearing clever masks that the ignorant fall for. It's only our belief that gives them power. They'd better learn to confess their lies and quit trying to throw their reign of control over us, because even at the lowest level these manipulators must face a fundamental law in the universe: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction..."
The conspiracy was deeper than I had ever dared to imagine. My mom was having an affair with Santa. I had to bring this lie to a close. End the lies, end the conspiracy, end the madness that suffocated this world.
"... kind of like the law of karma... "
I pointed the gun. Then I yelled like a crazed maniac. My mother's mouth fell open - was it the gun, or the sudden realization that I knew?
"... all that you put out comes back to you, everything goes as if in circles... "
Santa held his arms out. A cigar fell from his hand to the floor, and rolled until it came to a stop and hit the front wheels of my new toy truck.
A shot rang out. Santa made a gurgling, gasping noise and something behind him exploded. It was an apple. there was applesause everywhere.
Mom fell back against the hard brick wall beside the fireplace and screamed. As for Santa: what was white in his red suit drowned in an ocean of red.
Over mom's screams, I sneered at him and growled: "Merry fuckin' Christmas."
".... and so the lie you make, or the lie you perpetuate, is doomed to blow up in your face. This is your Q-tip amigo signin' off."
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