You Better Not Pout

Is it odd if a child sits on a strange man's lap? The answer is yes, but only if we’re talking about a normal, everyday occurrence. But around this time of year, when large, white bearded men with booming voices and jiggling waistlines begin to take over shopping malls and local libraries, all natural fears about who a child associates with are thrown out the window, or in this case, off the sleigh.

But why is this so? I don’t have any solid, factual answers, but I can offer one theory. First off, there are photo ops. When a parent has a camera in hand, everything changes. And none more so than around the holidays.

Some parents go to extreme lengths to capture a perfect picture of their child with Santa. They’ll wait in lines for hours, while the highways freeze outside TJ Maxx and their children's stomachs turn from the last round of Hot-Dog-on-a-Stick. These parents will wait forever, continuing to tell their kid that “we’re getting close,” or “we’re next,” all the while cleaning their ridiculously expensive camera lenses with special wipes, lenses so large you’d think they were about to shoot a satellite image from space.

Let’s diverge with a recent example, where I, myself, was somehow caught in a similar line with an all too inferior camera.

Case in point: story time at the local library.

Now, I like story times. It’s good for kids to read, eventually get a library card and learn responsibility by respecting others property. It’s important for children to discover and have fun doing it, blah, blah, blah. Plus, the library is a nice way for parents to get out of the house on a rainy or too hot of day. You don’t have to keep asking your child, “What should we do today?” The county has answered the question for you—story time. Sometimes you might be able to steal a nap on one of the oversized stuffed bears and elephants every kids section seem to have. Some days your kid might actually allow you to read books you want to read. But those are special, sun eclipsing the moon types of days.

It’s all good and fun, almost relaxing. Then Christmas comes along.

It’s amazing how many parents don’t take their children to libraries on a regular basis. I’ll drop off the plank and even call myself a regular to our town’s branch, holiday or not. Being a regular, I should know when and when not to go. But for some reason, this was the second time I’ve been caught surrounded by holiday clad soccer moms and overenthusiastic librarians. The first go-round didn’t seem as bad. Then again, maybe I just like Halloween better.

So we show up on time a few weeks before Christmas, book bag around shoulder, a bag of trail mix and organically popped popcorn bulging out of my jacket pockets. We have the usual “Rowan, go pee” argument once we get through the library doors, but he’s not as determined as usual to tell me that he never has to go to the bathroom again. Actually, he doesn’t even seem to hear me, his entire body craning to look around the shoplifting detectors standing a few feet away from the checkout desk. Then we hear something, both of us noticing the sound at the same time. He flinches when the noise comes again, sneaks behind me and wraps around my upper thigh.

“Daddy?” he says, and I can feel the fear in his voice as the next Ho-Ho-Ho echoes towards us. Being born in September four years earlier, this is my son’s fifth encounter with the same sound, and I can’t say that I blame him for reacting the way he does.

“It’s okay,” I say, and walk into the main room of the library, the sirens of the shoplifting gates blaring as we move into the children's section.

Now I know that all Santas aren’t Billy Bob Thornton or whoever the maniac was who played the same character in Silent Night, Deadly Night, but there is something off about a lumberjack looking man sporting rouge and wearing nightcaps. But damn does he draw a crowd. And he’s got something working for him to. Ninety-nine percent of the adults lined up to see him are women.

Once again I become tricked that my son actually wants to see this wintry icon. Or maybe I pushed the idea on him. We were there, standing among the others. He didn’t drive himself to the library. He can’t read the flyers advertising Santa’s “visit” to the library, which I later noticed posted to most every light post and pinned to every tack board in town. He can’t say no to the chance of going to a place he loves so much, filled with books and computer games and the opportunity to corral his dad into reading everything within reach. For the most part, he still does what I do, goes where I go. For the most part, he’s still just a baby.

I’m no longer a kid, and most of my youngest memories have been washed away, but I guess I can see the draw to Santa, in one way or another. The beer gutted man with a James Earl Jones voice is promising each kid not only the ability to fly with him in his reindeer guided sleigh but also presents, for the small price of being a good little boy or girl and sitting on his thigh.

In hindsight, though, Rowan probably wasn’t waiting in line just for the guarantee of presents. Sure he might’ve overheard some of the other kids saying that they were going to get everything they asked for because they have been good since the day they were pulled into the world. He was probably watching all of them clog the “reading carpet” in front of Santa, faces we don’t normally see on our usual Friday’s at the library. He could’ve been studying the way they pushed and shoved for position, against their own mothers no less, to get closer to Mr. Claus. Or he might not have noticed any of those things. Maybe he simply wanted to see if the man in the big red suit scared him anymore.

So we waited, not as long as others but not as short as some. Eventually we made it to Santa. My son didn’t sit on his lap. He didn’t even look at him. He sat on a chair next to him, looking at me snapping pictures of him. Santa got mad at me, actually raised his voice a little in opposition when I told him Rowan has always been a little unsure about others like him. Then he handed my son a bag filled with candy, a pencil, and a bookmark, doing so without a smile until the next kid was forced onto his lap.

Rowan led me through the remaining crowd and headed towards the books. I might’ve read a dozen, maybe more, both of us sitting within the outspread arms of a giant panda. He asked me if he was a good boy. I asked him what he thought. He said yes, and then handed me another book.

The same every year.