There are certain rituals that I, forty-one years old and without children, have never had to endure. One of those would be taking a kid to see santa.
It didn't even occur to me that this would happen. Tabbatha, Paul and I were just kind of hanging out yesterday, no particular plans, and Paul was wound up. I suggested taking him to the Play Place at Southridge, the mall closest to Tabbatha's place.
So we did, and as we're sitting there watching him blow off his typical seven-year-old's energy, Tabbatha suddenly announces she's going to "go look around." She wandered off, Paul barely noticed, life goes on.
When she reappeared, she asked Paul if he wanted to visit Santa. He nodded his head and we were off to the other side of the mall.
Traipsing through malls at Christmastime is not one of my favorite things to do, but it was strangely quiet and empty. When we got down to Santa's hangout--bizarrely tricked up as a ramshackle two-storey house with what appeared to be the stuffed corpses of an elderly couple propped in rocking chairs on the second floor--the line was fairly short.
Enthusiasm was muted from all the kids in line as we proceeded. Southridge is on the south side of Des Moines, and it caters to a more downscale crowd. Maybe these kids had already learned it was pointless to tell Santa their wildest Christmas wishes, because they knew they'd never come true.
As we approached Santa's throne, or comfy chair, or whatever the hell it's called, I asked Tabbatha what the protocol was when we got there. She snorted. "There's no protocol. He gets on his lap, they talk, we leave."
Oh.
Which is all that happened. As we slogged back to the other side of the mall, I wondered what the point of the whole thing was, but knew better than to ask.
