On the way home from work yesterday (slogging through “OH MYGOD IT’S SNOWING!!! HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?!?! AIEEEEE!!!!” traffic) I passed by one of the seventy-kajillion Walgreens stores in the greater Chi-town area. In front, they have one of those ubiquitous LCD signs where the promote their great bargains on milk, summer sales on cooling products*, and the latest in feminine hygiene products. On this particular day, they were promoting that “Santa was coming” on December 16th from something like 10am to 5pm.
I was stunned. Santa? Going to a Walgreens?!? WTF? I mean, I know that the guy has magical powers, being able to zip across continents at the speed of light and consume cookies at speeds that would cause impacted bowels in mortal humans. But how is it that a few weeks before his only workday of the year he’s got time to go to a single Walgreens in Melrose Park?
When I was a kid I knew how the whole thing worked. Santa didn’t have time to visit everywhere because he had other things to do. So instead of visiting my local hardware store in Fessenden, ND – he focused on the major metropolitan areas (like Fargo) where he could meet with the largest number of kids possible in a limited amount of time. Kids like myself had to use the US Mail to convey our lists to Santa. Granted, it was a less-secure form of communication, but those were the risks we took during the Cold War. The North Pole was perilously close to the Soviet Union, and I knew that Santa was unable to receive correspondence except the US Mail delivered to his house secretly by nuclear submarines. Think I’m crazy? How many of you trusted FedEx with your letters to Santa? Huh? Yeah – nobody did that because FedEx doesn’t have access to nuclear submarines.
In recent years though, I’m noticing that Santa is starting to “slum it” more and more often – visiting places that he’d never have had time to visit back in the 80’s. Case in point – this silly little Walgreens. There is only one explanation for this proliferation of Santa visits, and as much as it hurts to admit it I have come to terms with the fact that Santa…[sigh]…is cloning himself. So instead of focusing on building better toys that kids actually want he’s down in a lab somewhere surrounded by petri dishes and a hump-backed elf assistant, chuckling to himself and proclaiming “I’m going to send this one to a 7-11 in Hazzard, Kentucky!”. No wonder kids these days are incapable of building anything out of Legos other than what’s on the box.
And where are the Republicans on this issue, I wonder? Why aren’t they all up in arms over human cloning and faux Santas spreading out across the country? Where’s Ann Coulter’s hysterical shrieking about Santa being corrupted by Michael Moore, Janeane Garofolo, and the rest of the baby-murdering left? I suppose Santa’s lobbying efforts would be pretty effective (“If you don’t vote to table that resolution, I know a certain young girl of yours stands a very good chance of being transferred to the naughty list…permanently!”). [Sigh]…another institution of my youth corrupted by greed and power, I suppose. Santa, baseball players on steroids…what’s next – is Big Bird employing child slaves in Thailand’s textile industry? No wonder kids spend all their time playing video games and on the internet, who’s left in the real world to be a hero?
We need to bring back Mr. Hooper – everybody’s ethics went in the toilet when he passed away.
* My favorite ones are the ones they link to the current temperature, which sometimes result in unintentional humor when the weather is cooler than expected (e.g. “It’s 54 degrees outside – we have ice!”)
I was stunned. Santa? Going to a Walgreens?!? WTF? I mean, I know that the guy has magical powers, being able to zip across continents at the speed of light and consume cookies at speeds that would cause impacted bowels in mortal humans. But how is it that a few weeks before his only workday of the year he’s got time to go to a single Walgreens in Melrose Park?
When I was a kid I knew how the whole thing worked. Santa didn’t have time to visit everywhere because he had other things to do. So instead of visiting my local hardware store in Fessenden, ND – he focused on the major metropolitan areas (like Fargo) where he could meet with the largest number of kids possible in a limited amount of time. Kids like myself had to use the US Mail to convey our lists to Santa. Granted, it was a less-secure form of communication, but those were the risks we took during the Cold War. The North Pole was perilously close to the Soviet Union, and I knew that Santa was unable to receive correspondence except the US Mail delivered to his house secretly by nuclear submarines. Think I’m crazy? How many of you trusted FedEx with your letters to Santa? Huh? Yeah – nobody did that because FedEx doesn’t have access to nuclear submarines.
In recent years though, I’m noticing that Santa is starting to “slum it” more and more often – visiting places that he’d never have had time to visit back in the 80’s. Case in point – this silly little Walgreens. There is only one explanation for this proliferation of Santa visits, and as much as it hurts to admit it I have come to terms with the fact that Santa…[sigh]…is cloning himself. So instead of focusing on building better toys that kids actually want he’s down in a lab somewhere surrounded by petri dishes and a hump-backed elf assistant, chuckling to himself and proclaiming “I’m going to send this one to a 7-11 in Hazzard, Kentucky!”. No wonder kids these days are incapable of building anything out of Legos other than what’s on the box.
And where are the Republicans on this issue, I wonder? Why aren’t they all up in arms over human cloning and faux Santas spreading out across the country? Where’s Ann Coulter’s hysterical shrieking about Santa being corrupted by Michael Moore, Janeane Garofolo, and the rest of the baby-murdering left? I suppose Santa’s lobbying efforts would be pretty effective (“If you don’t vote to table that resolution, I know a certain young girl of yours stands a very good chance of being transferred to the naughty list…permanently!”). [Sigh]…another institution of my youth corrupted by greed and power, I suppose. Santa, baseball players on steroids…what’s next – is Big Bird employing child slaves in Thailand’s textile industry? No wonder kids spend all their time playing video games and on the internet, who’s left in the real world to be a hero?
We need to bring back Mr. Hooper – everybody’s ethics went in the toilet when he passed away.
* My favorite ones are the ones they link to the current temperature, which sometimes result in unintentional humor when the weather is cooler than expected (e.g. “It’s 54 degrees outside – we have ice!”)
Comments
That's priceless!