Waiting in Line for Santa
I finally came to the conclusion that Christmas means a lot to an eight year-old and so I reluctantly decided to play the game.
We showed up at the mall at five to get a jump on the insanity, but Santa was out on dinner break until six: We became prisoners.
We wandered around the mall for 40 minutes. Fucking-A I hate the mall–even more so at this time of the year. Half of the disposable income of our country resides in the over-allowanced wallets and purses of spoiled, zit-faced teenagers who wander about from store to store with sacks and sacks of meaningless SHIT. The lads all look like Eurotrash Flock of Seagulls singers–their hair black-dyed n’ blowdried, their pants, safety-pin pegged, their earbud cords, dangling like the avant-garde Apple commercials with the free-spirited ingrates doing the shadowy, lookieme dance. The ladies all look like whored-up Britney Spears’ back-up singers–their asses ridiculously bulbous, their earrings, long and loopy, their morals, loose like their incessantly chit-chatting, gum-flapping lips.
Baby Jesus, make them go away, please–ALL OF THEM.
We got mixed up with these creatures, making the mother of all calamitous decisions by deciding to enter Spencers for a gander: we were there for five seconds. They openly sell vibrators, g-spot ticklers, anatomically correct dildos and every scatalogical comedic possibility known to these pubescent balls of hormonal secretion. It’s all there–TA-DA!
We left Spencers and walked over to Macys–lots of worry-creased bald men hurriedly buying jewelry and lacy garter belts there. Lots of desperate men throwing dollar sign band-aids over dyspeptic marital dysfunction, there
A sweaty Santa walked past us and so we followed him to his final destination: the fake ‘Santa House’–teeming with ‘me-wanta’ baboons. We stood in line for about twenty minutes. Josie noticed that the gigantic tree was artificial. The kids in front of us, (belonging to the happyland nuclear family taking pictures of everything) started crying because they didn’t get to hear the recording that the disgruntled elf had to say in the plastic telephone that hung precariously from the wall of ‘Santa’s House.’ One of the kids ripped the phone out of Josie’s hands. The mother let it all unfold, saying nothing. I just watched it unfold, UN Blau Helm observer-like–my daughter took the high road and surrendered the germ-infested phone receiver to the grabbing hands: God bless her.
Ahead of that family was a mother of two children. She wore no wedding ring and had that long, drawn, tired look of non-stop, round the clock, single parenting; she had that far-way gaze, that nervous stare that I can spot in those of us who just can’t seem to wedge ourselves any longer into what is expected of gollygeemom+Searscraftsmandad=Godnapplepie America (the football ‘Merica, the Eagles fight song-singing ‘Merica).
There was obviously no father around and she obviously had no money: Her clothes and her kids’ clothes gave that away (all sweatsuits–very Walmart, not very PhillyMcExton-like). The bubbly photo lady asked which package she wanted and she said her kids were, “Just there to visit.”
The photo lady said, “Oh, you are just there to visit.” She then turned to Santa and put one of her hands in front of her face, warning Santa with a wink that, “They are just here to visit.”
Santa acknowledge the secret sign. No official photo was taken. Santa rushed them along. Chop-bloody-chop.
The mom stepped aside and took out a first-generation digital camera from her purse; it was first-generation because it was more faded, scratchy plastic than flashy, digital screen; the photo lady whispered to her, “We frown upon that, you know. Pictures should be paid for.”
The mom nodded her head and proceeded to take pictures, despite the warning: I smiled at the mom’s intransigence–you go girl. The photo lady shook her head at us, looking for grade-A, McPeople sympathy, looking for one empathetic sigh. She then waved her hand to the next family, motioning them onto Santa’s lap, moving the free-riders off. She looked like a church usher at midnight mass; she was there to seat the people who had come there to check the block.
Josie’s turn came eventually and she asked Santa for this:
Santa looked at up at me for approval and I shook my head–east to west. I tried to convey to him that I too am a single parent (One socio-economic rung above Walmart free-rider status, that is: I’m a paying customer, but I buy the 2 x5s–one for the ex-, one for moi) and that an overpriced, animatronic pony wasn’t going to happen this year. Animatronic shit belongs in Disney’s Hall of the Presidents, not in my house.
But there was no time for all this. Santa whispered into Josie’s ear: I don’t know what. He then gave her some rubber Santaman doll. Santa’s arms and legs can contort into all sorts of impossible positions–enough to make the mall teenagers with the sacks and the seeking semen giggle with visions of sexual innuendoes in their head.
Then photo lady yelled, “Next!”
I paid for our picture; I handed my credit card to the disinterested woman who was talking to someone on the phone. She never made eye contact: she handed me a pen, then she said, “Thank you.”
Then we left.