Installment Number 3. 

By T W Ladd 11/15/2020

I had been forced to choose before. One Christmas time, while riding in the car with my mom and brother, my mom said, apropos of what I have no idea, “It’s either Jesus or Santa. It can’t be both. But if you want to go to heaven, it’s gotta be Jesus.”

I remember being viscerally startled at that. As far as memories that stand out, memories of ideas that I found utterly offensive, of ideas that seemed shockingly wrong, ideas that were not just inconvenient but part of an existential threat, having to choose between Santa or Jesus was one of the most salient of my pretty comfortably dull life.

When did this happen? How old was I? I can’t be sure. It had to be after the year when we stood in line at the Santa Train to meet the big guy himself. Now that is a really early memory and very very sketchy memory.

My dad worked for Grand Trunk Railroad. I think that Santa was only there for friends and family of employees. I think you needed a ticket. I’m assuming here based on memories. It seems like when we finally did get up to the fat man in red that I was terrified of him and wanted no part of sitting on his lap.

I wonder if that was before or after my brother told me point blank, “Santa’s dead.” I went into a fit of hysterics. We were in our bunk beds. Mine was on top. I have no idea why I had to sleep on the top bunk. Wasn’t I afraid of falling down the ladder? I don’t remember being afraid of that. I remember loving the climb. I’m surprised I didn’t fall when I had to climb down in the early hours to pee. That never happened.

But I distinctly remember Chuck laughingly tell me Santa was dead. He died a long time ago, you baby! That kind of thing. No, no! That’s not true. Oh, yes it is true and so forth. Through lots of snot I bawled that “He’ll come back to life for me!”

I had powers over death, I guess. What was this? 1974, maybe? I can’t be sure of the sequence of events with these dim, early recollections. I do know we were in the first house I lived in, beside the freeway on the end of a dead end street. I-94 was about a hundred yards away. Trucks roared by at all hours. Sometimes an 18-wheeler would have a blow out that sounded like a canon going off. That would wake everyone in the house. If I woke up I’d watch the headlights go around the edge of the ceiling. First one way and then dart back in the opposite direction. And then a vehicle would come from the other direction and light would ride around the reverse of the first. If light could go backward, maybe time could too. Maybe the dead could rise again. Maybe we just had to want it bad enough.