yes.”
“It’s been said the only honest man in a king’s court is the jester.”
Santa laughed. “That’s marvelous! What a story that must make!”
“Sorry, it’s just an observation. It doesn’t come with a story.”
“Well. I shall have to compose one. Or you will. I’m sure you have a storyteller inside of you somewhere. An immortal man… the tales you must have!”
I do have a jester story, but it doesn’t have a happy ending and I didn’t feel like telling it. A lot of my stories—and he wasn’t wrong in assuming I have quite a few—end in ways that make them either not worth retelling, or retelling only in the interest of depressing or frightening those assembled. I am an aggregator of cautionary tales.
I didn’t often share them, though, at least not at the time Santa and I were talking. I had found that keeping my own counsel was the best strategy for survival. That said, there have been a few periods in history where I wrote some of my life out, mostly in situations where nobody could take me seriously. Epic poetry, once it was invented, was a decent outlet, although I wasn’t what anybody would call a decent poet. Fiction prose writing, as a form, has also proven to be decent cover for my autobiographical writings.
Telling stories aloud was a skill I excelled at once too, a millennium ago, when traveling storytelling was in vogue. But that was only rarely about my own life, unless there was drink involved. As Santa had already observed, men talk more freely when plied with alcohol. I’m certainly not an exception.
“I think,” Santa said, “you should come to Gimbel’s with me tomorrow.”
He said it in a way that indicated this was already a settled decision.
“Why would I do that? Do you need someone to dress up as an elf? I think I may be too tall.”
There are real elves, incidentally. They’re nearly indistinguishable from humans in every way, including height. However, the child-sized elves of the Santa mythology are not real.
“You can be a helper! No costume needed, just dress normally. If any of the staff asks, I can explain you’re there from the agency to… I don’t know, to inspect matters or some such thing.”
“There’s an agency?”
“They think there is. I’m the only one who shows up, but they believe I’m part of a team of Santas that all look alike. The store has another agency on call if I’m unavailable.”
“Well, Santa is supposed to always look the same, isn’t he?”
“Tell that to Macy’s! So what do you say?”
“I can’t think of a single reason to do this.”
“Excellent! Then I’ll see you in the store. I begin at 10.”
* * *
The 1950’s were a little odd. With hindsight it’s possible to look on the era and see things that appear entirely normal and familiar from a modern perspective, but in the moment those things were new and innovative. And odd.
It was in the fifties that Americans figured out living in cities can suck, and the suburbs became a thing. That was only possible because of affordable cars and more widely available public transportation, two new realities that featured prominently in the disagreement in the bar. Not discussed at the bar but also a relatively new thing: everyone suddenly had a television. This was in part because TV reached the same level of affordability, need and utility that made radio mandatory some thirty years earlier, and partly because the whole country seemed to be enjoying an immoderate level of affluence, with no new war to spend it on.
Americans needed to spend all of that new money, and television had advertisements for products that they could spend their money on, so all they needed to know was where to go to get the things being advertised.
Thus: department stores. People would get in their new cars and drive from their new suburban homes over the new bridges built for them, to go to the nearest
“It’s been said the only honest man in a king’s court is the jester.”
Santa laughed. “That’s marvelous! What a story that must make!”
“Sorry, it’s just an observation. It doesn’t come with a story.”
“Well. I shall have to compose one. Or you will. I’m sure you have a storyteller inside of you somewhere. An immortal man… the tales you must have!”
I do have a jester story, but it doesn’t have a happy ending and I didn’t feel like telling it. A lot of my stories—and he wasn’t wrong in assuming I have quite a few—end in ways that make them either not worth retelling, or retelling only in the interest of depressing or frightening those assembled. I am an aggregator of cautionary tales.
I didn’t often share them, though, at least not at the time Santa and I were talking. I had found that keeping my own counsel was the best strategy for survival. That said, there have been a few periods in history where I wrote some of my life out, mostly in situations where nobody could take me seriously. Epic poetry, once it was invented, was a decent outlet, although I wasn’t what anybody would call a decent poet. Fiction prose writing, as a form, has also proven to be decent cover for my autobiographical writings.
Telling stories aloud was a skill I excelled at once too, a millennium ago, when traveling storytelling was in vogue. But that was only rarely about my own life, unless there was drink involved. As Santa had already observed, men talk more freely when plied with alcohol. I’m certainly not an exception.
“I think,” Santa said, “you should come to Gimbel’s with me tomorrow.”
He said it in a way that indicated this was already a settled decision.
“Why would I do that? Do you need someone to dress up as an elf? I think I may be too tall.”
There are real elves, incidentally. They’re nearly indistinguishable from humans in every way, including height. However, the child-sized elves of the Santa mythology are not real.
“You can be a helper! No costume needed, just dress normally. If any of the staff asks, I can explain you’re there from the agency to… I don’t know, to inspect matters or some such thing.”
“There’s an agency?”
“They think there is. I’m the only one who shows up, but they believe I’m part of a team of Santas that all look alike. The store has another agency on call if I’m unavailable.”
“Well, Santa is supposed to always look the same, isn’t he?”
“Tell that to Macy’s! So what do you say?”
“I can’t think of a single reason to do this.”
“Excellent! Then I’ll see you in the store. I begin at 10.”
* * *
The 1950’s were a little odd. With hindsight it’s possible to look on the era and see things that appear entirely normal and familiar from a modern perspective, but in the moment those things were new and innovative. And odd.
It was in the fifties that Americans figured out living in cities can suck, and the suburbs became a thing. That was only possible because of affordable cars and more widely available public transportation, two new realities that featured prominently in the disagreement in the bar. Not discussed at the bar but also a relatively new thing: everyone suddenly had a television. This was in part because TV reached the same level of affordability, need and utility that made radio mandatory some thirty years earlier, and partly because the whole country seemed to be enjoying an immoderate level of affluence, with no new war to spend it on.
Americans needed to spend all of that new money, and television had advertisements for products that they could spend their money on, so all they needed to know was where to go to get the things being advertised.
Thus: department stores. People would get in their new cars and drive from their new suburban homes over the new bridges built for them, to go to the nearest
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