Cheating Santa

I'm not sure how the pudgy little girl with the large, dark eyes and the disheveled curly, raven-black hair managed it. But, somehow, for a few Christmases at least, she found the way to climb over the metal railing of the stairs in their two-story house and all the way down to the first floor.

Once there, she found herself poised in front of all the toys organized around the living room, no Santa or another soul there to witness what she was up to, except the sunlit-yellow canary who would eye her with curiosity from his tall black cage set in a corner of the dining room.

I'm not sure when, how or why the pudgy little girl came up with the idea but she did. And she must have been quite Machiavellian about this, even at that early age, because she had to be absolutely certain that no one would catch her. I know she figured that as long as no one caught her, she could cheat Santa and no one would ever know.

The only witness, said canary, was the one who sometime later died at the paws of a cunning, stray cat that somehow toppled its gigantic black cage and got a hold of the little bird. The worst part, as I remember it, is that the little girl was coming down the stairs (the same ones she'd climb down for her Christmas wee-hours crime sprees) when she noticed a very cute cat playing with a yellow ball in their dining room.

The last thing that occurred to her was that this was no innocent yellow ball but that it was her beloved canary. This was one in a succession of canaries given to her by her titi Bebi, and it was providing the cat's entertainment. I vaguely recall grand hysterics at the realization and some psychologist would certainly jot down the fact that the pudgy little girl, who eventually turned into a capable woman, never had birds as pets again, only cats.

What a psychologist would say about the Christmas wee-hours crime sprees, I'm not so sure. Because what the pudgy little girl decided once she was in front of all the toys was that she could swap those that she wasn't so happy with. All she had to do was trade those she didn't want with those she wanted, which she found in the area where her little sister's toys were arrayed. (Santa was very organized back then, leaving the toys for the each of the sisters in the identical, green velvet sofas that faced each other in the living room, and the brother's toys in the chair that sat between the sofas.)

I remember how the pudgy little girl rummaged through her sister's Barbie shoes and selected those that she liked better than the ones Santa had left for her on her sofa. She never stole, since she never took more than she replaced. In her 5- or 6-year-old mind, she simply bartered. And her sister wasn't as much a Barbie fan as she was, being more the kind of little girl who drooled over the dolls that looked like babies. But those never interested the pudgy little girl at all. Not surprisingly, the sister became a model mom while the pudgy little girl, as a woman, was happy with her cats, and later her expensive-to-maintain senile mutts.

Many years later, when she confessed the Christmas wee-hours crime sprees to her family, her sister told of how she'd always find the same ugly stuffed donkey on her sofa. Even when she hadn't asked Santa for that toy and hadn't enjoyed it the first time the ugly stuffed donkey showed up. A woman now, the little pudgy girl doesn't remember bartering any donkeys and her sister has a penchant for inventing memories, so she's not very sure about the accuracy of this report.

I'm also not sure whether the little pudgy girl had stopped believing in Santa and was using this as an opportunity to test her parents' memory and see if they would notice something amiss. Or whether she simply figured that Santa was an old, fat gringo guy with a very poor sense of fashion, who just couldn't tell which sister loved Barbies and which sister didn't really.

I do remember one time when the little pudgy girl, not so little anymore, set a trap for Santa. She had seen in a TV ad how a pair of gringo children left cookies and a glass of milk with a note for Santa, asking Santa a question. By the ad's end, Santa penned down an answer, drank the milk and ate the cookies, never forgetting to leave them tons of toys.

The little pudgy girl thought that she'd imitate the ad so she set the glass and the cookies and the note. But her actual plan was to carefully examine the response the next morning to catch them unawares and finally prove that Santa was an alias for her parents. Of course, her parents were much smarter, and the handwriting on the note was unrecognizable. The little pudgy girl could not match it to anything her parents had ever written. Oh, well, she shrugged. And gave it up.

It sure has been many moons and sunrises and hurricanes and near-death experiences since that little pudgy girl went on her Christmas wee-hours crime sprees. But Christmas still retains that joyful, glowing feeling of anticipation and mischief for her. There is no multi-colored lighted tree with a bright star on top in her living room now (not after Darwin tried to chew on the lights and Magellan made it her personal project to bat each and every ornament off the tree), especially since her husband objects to the Christmas Tree Holocaust every holiday season.

But Christmas never loses that bated-breath sense of promise and happiness that it had when she was a little pudgy girl. For that privilege, and for everything else they have ever done for her, she'll always be eternally grateful to her parents.