My couch, 11:06 p.m. - My Santa suit, let me show you it

I left the apartment exactly once today, for about fifteen minutes. This period involved a trip to the Sonic for a breakfast burrito - even though it was well past noon - and a subsequent stop at the 7-Eleven.

My efforts to flirt with the 7-Eleven checkout boy who looks like a Sasquatch married to a Q-tip (he's short, but with big hair and a beard, and very cute) were marred by a stupid German tourist who demanded relish for his hot dogs in a very loud voice. Thus, some old man named Butch with an emphasemic wheeze scanned my items but failed to properly check me out, if you know what I'm saying.

Anyway. Let's continue the holiday theme, unless you want me to describe my living room, complete with piles of magazine, dirty laundry and a dining room table with three months of unsorted mail. I have unread magazines that haven't seen the light of day in months and are likely touting trends that are already out of style. Mukluks anyone?

When did I stop believing in Santa? Although the alternate title here could be "When I learned that all parents lie to their children."

Back in the dawn of antiquity, I lived in a tiny hamlet in a poor rural parish in one of the poorest states in the Deep South. Even now, the entire population of the parish is just above 20,000. But that's beside the point. The social life was akin to something straight from Laura Ingalls Wilder - centered around the church and the school.

Every Christmas, the community - which was basically an off-ramp off the Interstate with a gas station and a high school with some cotton gins nearby and - would gather at the high school cafeteria on the Friday night after school let out for a big community celebration.

The high school cafeteria was used because it was the largest open space in the parish with a big kitchen. The rural churches had neither the space for the people - nor the facilities to prepare food for five hundred people.

I loved the community Christmas parties. It was AT school but wasn't like BEING at school. The food was certainly much better - because the cafeteria ladies weren't cooking it - some of the big fat church ladies were. Plus I could get a soda instead of milk if I wanted - and seconds and thirds. There was singing and music and small fireworks and lots of people. It was just lots of fun - especially for child of six or seven who was just that day free from school for at least the next two weeks. Plus, the almighty glory of Christmas was in the future.

There was always a Santa Claus children - and parents could either bring a gift from home for Santa to give their child or sign up and pay money for the organizers to buy a gift off their child's wish list. Kids actually got something they wanted - instead of generic toys or trains or dolls.

I remember thinking that Santa was so wise and so powerful to be able to produce EXACTLY what I wanted just minutes after I whispered it in his ear. Of course, all the adults in the room got a huge kick out of watching the kids tear open presents.

The very last time my parents took me to this shindig, I remember that my dad was late and didn't come with us. My mother said that he was running late and would find us later. He did and helped me navigate the dinner line and ate dinner with me and took me outside to watch the fireworks that older kids were shooting off. I loved sparklers at this age and he found a box and lit sparkler after sparkler for me and watched to make sure I didn't catch my fool self on fire.

I was running around with a sparkler and then I looked up and he was gone. It was just one of my uncles there - who told me "Your daddy had to go. Someone came and told him that all the cows were out and he had to go home." I was really pissed off at all those idiot cows, but they had a habit of getting out, so it was nothing unusual to me.

I ran around for a while longer and my uncle took me back inside, because Santa Claus was about to show up.

My uncle got me a piece of chocolate pie so I would have something to occupy me (and not bother him) and parked me in the line to visit Santa. Then he went off to find pie of his own. "You stay right here and follow these kids. I can see you from across the room. If you need anything, just wave." I was fine though. started working on my pie and thinking about what I was going to tell Santa and if he would be able to give me everything on my list this year.

Noisy crowd, smallish space, little kid. It wasn't until I got to within four or five kids of Santa that I began to get a little weirded out. For one, Santa was not fat. Two, Santa seemed to have a red beard. Three, Santa sounded just like my daddy. But my daddy was supposed to be home, chasing runaway cows.

Anyway. When you're seven, you don't dwell on these things, not with chocolate pie to lick off your fingers and wish lists to make up. Anyway. I get to the batting circle, so to speak, and the girl ahead of me jumps off Santa's lap.

Santa leans down and goes "Ho Ho Ho, have you been a good little boy?"

And his fake beard falls off.

Me: "Daddy?"

The rest of the night is pretty much a blur, although I apparently "ruined" Christmas for all the kids who thought that my father was Santa Claus by crying and carrying on like I did. My parents scolded me for acting like a baby and said that my dad was only "filling in" for Santa while he was busy somewhere else.

On top of everything, I got a bunk gift, because my mother forgot to bring one from home for me - and I got one from the donated pile that they used for poor families. What the hell did I want with $4 Wal-Mart plastic train?

We never went back to the community Christmas celebration - and two years later it broke up so that the Baptists and the Pentecostals wouldn't have compromise over not singing hymns and having a proper Christmas sermon on school property.

The Methodists and the Church of God people didn't care - they just wanted to eat and spend some time with the community - but the Baptist women were the ones that did all the cooking. Plus one of the new Baptist ministers was raising a fuss over how people were taking Christ out of Christmas - what with gifts and fireworks and food and no mention of the Lord.

So it all fell apart. I forgot about the whole thing for a while, until about three years later, I was playing in my dad's closet - and saw that Santa suit hanging in there.

My dad - secret identity - Santa Claus.