What an exciting week this would be for me, sixty seven years ago. That was when I still believed that some hairy character in a red suit would somehow break into our house and leave a bunch of gifts under our Christmas tree. I seriously believed this guy and his livestock could fly around the world in one night and do that for everybody. I was an easy mark. I never once questioned why some kids on my block got much nicer toys and gifts than I did. And it made perfect sense that he lived up north and worked all year making those toys. Which he then would advertise on afternoon television for a whole month, even though he gave them away for free. After all, at that age I believed that little people lived in the kitchen radio and were putting on a show just for us. I also believed that invisible people were all around me when I was alone in the living room. You could just about tell me anything at that age and I'd believe it. So imagine the crushing realization I had that day in December of 1955 when I opened the door to the attic at the top of the stairs, and saw a pile of new toys in boxes. There was the Daisy BB gun my brother wanted. There was the Lionel Train, instead of the American Flyer Train that I really wanted. There, in that cold attic, was a stack of toys hidden under a blanket. So that's how Santa Claus did it. He pre-delivered everything. It took me a few more days to process what I had seen up there. When I finally figured out that it was all a hoax, that there was no Santa Claus, no flying reindeer, no magic toy factory somewhere north of Wisconsin, I started looking at other things that just didn't seem plausible. Poor Sister Mary Ellen, she never had a chance.
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