I remember my first Christmas adventure with Grandma. I was just a kid.
I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her on the day my big sister dropped the bomb: "There is no Santa Claus," she jeered. "Even dummies know that!"
When I was a little kid my mother always pulled a Santa Claus prank on me. We always got up very early to open our Christmas gifts on Christmas morning. As soon as it got light out, and I was preoccupied with my presents, she would position herself by the bedroom window, then shout out,
"Bill, come quick, look it's Santa Claus!!" I being a kid who didn't know any better, ran like hell down the hall to get to the window in time to see him riding off on his sleigh. Of course I never made it on time, and she would always say,
"You just missed him!!"She did it once too often. One year I was in my stocking feet, and in the process of tearing a$$ down the hall, I couldn't put the brakes on fast enough when I came to the bedroom. I slipped and cracked the side of my head on the door jam, giving me a real nice gash that took the hospital emergency room 4 stitches to close on Christmas morning.
My mother couldn't have felt more horrible. Nothing like a prank gone wrong that hurts your kid to make you feel like crap on Christmas morning. My dad added insult to injury by really laying into my mom on the way to the hospital. It really didn't phase me that much because all I wanted was to get back home and play with my new toys. Afterward my mom explained to me there really wasn't a Santa Claus. I was beginning to question his existence myself, but never thought my mother would lie to me about things like that.
That was 1957, and I was 5 years old. My mother never forgot that, and reminded me of it until she died. The scar went away after high school, but not the thought. When you're a kid things like that are more important than life itself.