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Dear Brandon,

Santa loves you very much. However, you will not be getting the Dual Mode Aqua Command Wave Rescuer thing that you asked for this year. It’s not that you’ve been bad. You’ve been a very, very good boy, except for that one time back in July when you broke your daddy’s DVD player, which he forgave you for, even though it was a really nice one, and you learned a very important lesson that day about taking food into the living room.

Anyway, Brandon, Santa loves you very much and really wanted to get you that Wave Rescuer Thingy, and Santa tried so hard to get it for you. He tried SO HARD. You wouldn’t believe how hard he tried. Santa went to a lot of different stores and spent a lot of time looking for the Thingy, and some of the stores didn’t even know what the heck Santa was talking about, so Santa thought for awhile that you might have made it up, or maybe heard it wrong on the TV. You know how sometimes you like to fib, which is not the same as lying, but it’s still not a good thing.

Then Santa went on the Internet. Santa is pretty good with the Internet, since he took that class last year, and though he still has some problems with certain parts of the whole thing, like when all of a sudden one of those error messages pops up, like "try opening 459.82, then link to information that you want," and then the whole thing freezes up and even the MOUSE doesn’t work. Talk about not even a mouse stirring, ho ho ho, and he has to turn the entire machine off and then restart it. But, the Internet has really saved Daddy a lot of time, and he found the Dual Mode Thingy you wanted and it turns out that it really does exist and it could even be purchased online, which made Santa very happy. So Santa got out his credit card and ordered it, and the man on the Internet said it would get to you by Christmas, and Santa even got one of those confirmation letters sent right to his email, santa@hohoho.com, with a very long number that seemed to promise that the Thingy would be delivered.

However, sometimes when grownups make promises, it doesn’t really mean they are going to do exactly what they promised to do, but only that they will try very, very hard to do that thing. That is how it turned out to be with the man on the Internet. Because the very next day, Santa got another letter in his email, which explained very nicely, the Thingy you wanted was out of stock and there was only one way Santa could get the Thingy, and that was to go to this one store all the way on the other side of town at a mall Santa hadn’t even heard of.

Now, you may or may not be aware, Brandon, that the number of people who live in our city grew by almost one third in the last year, which means, among other things, that traffic can be very congested at times, like especially right after work, when Santa might actually have the time to go to the mall and shop for presents. And this now being pretty close to Christmas, not because Santa waited too long, or was lazy, or forgot, or any of those things, but just because of the way things turned out. So Santa went to that mall, and though it took what seemed like half a day to get there, and it was in one of those new subdivisions where all the streets sound like they are the same only slightly different, like Eastlake Road and Eastlake Way and North Eastlake Valley Road, and Santa almost got lost and didn’t even think he would ever find his way home again.

But Santa did find the store that had the Aqua Thingy, and he was so happy as he walked in the front door, he was even whistling a Christmas song to himself, maybe Jingle Bells or Chestnuts or one of those ones Santa remembers from when he was a little boy. But then the lady at the cosmetics desk told him that the toy department was in something they call an "Annex," and Santa needed to get back in his car and make a left turn onto Eastlake Road and then a right turn on Eastlake Place, and then another right onto North Eastlake Way, and merge to the left through three lanes of traffic and then go into some parking structure on the other side of the highway.

Well.

I’m sure you will understand that when I did find the toy department and had that little Thingy in my hand and was standing in line to pay for it, I was a little bit off of my game at that point. I mean, I was not quite as jolly as you might remember me from some of the videos you like to watch over and over, like Santa in Elmo Land and Pooh’s Christmas or whatever. So I won’t go into all of the things that happened to me while I was in the line waiting to pay for the Thingy, because there are some things a child your age just doesn’t need to hear about, like the things that can happen when a bunch of grownups are shopping the week before Christmas.

Like if a guy in front of you takes it the wrong way if you ask a certain question, well that’s just too bad for him, isn’t it? It’s not like you meant anything mean by it, or like you were suggesting he couldn’t remember, or that he wasn’t smart enough to remember which type of Play Station game he was supposed to buy for his son, or that it didn’t matter anyway, because his son would probably break it in about two days.

Sometimes people are just going to say bad things to you and you’re going to feel like saying bad things back to them, but the thing to remember is, it’s just going to make you all feel worse than you even did before. And if they want to try to make you feel like you were the one who was out of line, or imply that you’re unstable, that you can’t control your anger, that you should just go home and rest for a little while, well, they were the one who started it all in the first place, weren’t they?

But Santa did finally reach the register lady where they take your credit card for the Thingy and put it in a nice bag and say Merry Christmas and all that, and Santa was almost ready to pick up the nice bag and bring it home to wrap and place under the Christmas Tree, when the little machine spit out Daddy’s credit card and said that the little magnetic stripe had been used so many times this year that it was all worn off.

You know what "worn off" means, Brandon. It’s like when a teddy bear is so old it can’t be washed anymore, not even one more time, or it will just fall to pieces. And Santa did use his credit card a lot this year. I mean a lot. And not for fun things, like presents or golf clubs or a new DVD player, even though the old one is now completely ruined and can’t really be used at all. Santa used his credit card for important things, like fixing the side of the wall that was leaking, and even food at the grocery store, because it hasn’t been the kind of year for having lots of money to do fun things with. There’s been Iraq, and the Stock Market, and you just have to remember, Brandon, everything is a cycle. It’s like a big roller coaster, and you can’t take your money out when things are bad, even if you really want to, because everyone says you have to leave it in.

And a lot of companies have cut jobs, which leaves the rest of us with more work to do and Santa even had to take a cut in pay, but he’s lucky to have a job at all.

And usually it isn’t a problem when your little magnetic stripe wears off, because they can still key in the numbers by hand. I’ve seen them do it, and it’s not like Santa wasn’t going to pay for the Thingy when he got the bill, or at least make his minimum monthly payment and a little more so we don’t end up paying all that interest forever, and have to declare bankruptcy. But the lady at the counter had a whole different idea, which was that the store couldn’t accept a card that had the magnetic stripe worn off, because it was all "for my protection." You see, the nice lady wanted so badly to protect me that she just couldn’t accept my card and if I wanted the Thingy, I would have to pay cash, which I didn’t have. I had never heard of such of a thing happening at a store before, but the lady proved it to me by showing me the great big sign behind the register that said, "For your protection, we can only accept credit cards with functioning magnetic stripes!."

I drove home pretty slowly that night, and not just because of the traffic and not just because I took a wrong turn on North Eastlake Parkway Street Drive. I just didn’t feel like going anywhere very fast. I had a lot of time to think and I thought about what things are really important, and about what things really matter in life. Like, you know how you always hear that you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. Well, I don’t want to sweat the small stuff anymore. On the other hand, you also always hear that it’s the little things that count. That kind of confuses Santa, because the little things really do count. I guess the most important thing is that a family is happy together, and that everyone is basically healthy, with the exception of your Aunt Paula, who seems to always be going to doctors for a bunch of stupid things and takes a bucket load of pills but never really gets any better.

So, Brandon, this year you’re getting a puppet made out of a sock. It’s a really nice puppet and you can have a lot of fun with it, and some children don’t get anything for Christmas at all. But I wanted you to know Santa loves you very, very much, and that he tried so hard to get you the toy you wanted, it makes him cry just thinking about it. And maybe next year you’ll get something better. But maybe not. It still depends on whether you are naughty or nice, because we don’t want to lose that, but apparently, it also depends on many other things-- things that are so confusing, even Santa can’t really understand or explain them at this point in time.

Love,

Santa

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