Speak, Memory

I remember exactly where I was the moment I learned that Santa Claus wasn’t real. My third grade class had just finished P.E., and we were lined up on the stairs leaving the gym, waiting for our teacher to pick us up. Some ass who had probably just learned the news himself decided to share it with the entire class. I went on to make the usual connections, and discarded my belief in elves, reindeer, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. Years later, I became the librarian at the same school, and every time I used the stairs to the gym, I remembered how shattered I felt

When I was 21, flying home from Denmark, I was seated next to a woman from Sweden about my age. We drank a lot of champagne, and she made an off hand remark about reindeer. I thought she was joking, and called her on it. She assured me she wasn’t, and when I got home, I announced to my whole family that reindeer were actually real.