Well it's Christmas and we are in dire need around here of a real Christmas story. So I'm going to tell you one of my very favorite ones about how naughty children get a lump of coal for Christmas. And that's a fact, Jack. Check it out.
It was around Christmastime 1963 that my father kept reminding me that if I didn't start behaving myself Santa would bring me a lump of coal in my stocking instead of presents.
Now I turned 8 just weeks before Christmas that year and was still solid in my belief of Santa Claus. And I had heard that story of coal in your stocking from my various aunts and uncles, Mr. King the barber, my friends parents and just about every adult I encountered. But I never met one kid, even ones who misbehaved way more than me, who had EVER gotten coal for Christmas... and we lived in the middle of the richest vein of bituminous coal ever discovered!
So needless to say I didn't take my father's threat real seriously. But I did try in vain to behave myself a little better as Christmas drew nearer. 'Cause he did seem to have an "in" with Santa Claus based on the stuff I asked for and the stuff I got the previous year. For instance, my dad told me he bought me the race cars and the figure 8 track they raced on because Santa knew I wanted it but he didn't have room in his sleigh. So he asked my dad to get it for me. Seemed logical and very plausible to me.
Well, 6:00am Christmas morning rolled around and I jumped out of bed to unwrap my presents. I got all kinds of stuff. Almost everything I asked for. And not a lump of coal to be found! Whoo-hoo. My parents were still asleep in bed so I wandered over to my stocking where the "little stuff" was. Usually not much really good stuff in the stocking. Maybe some candy, a piece of fruit, some cheap-ass plastic car or something like that.
And what was in there? Well, I'll be damned... A PIECE OF COAL!! In fact a very LARGE piece of coal. Son of a bitch if that Santa Claus didn't know how bad I was after all. I got so much stuff though. It was like he was saying, "Look you're a pretty good kid so I got you some nice presents. But you're a smart-ass little bastard sometimes and a royal pain in your parents ass. So straighten up or it's all coal next year, buddy."
YIKES!!! What could I do? I felt so bad. I was embarrassed that Santa Claus knew I was bad enough to get coal... when even the bad kids didn't get any. Shit, I couldn't let my parents wake up and find out that Santa brought me coal. Then they wouldn't get me anything either. So, showing signs of the resourceful son-of-a-bitch I grew up to be, I had to think fast. We had a coal furnace, and thus a coal bin downstairs to keep our winter fuel. So I tip-toed down the steps and threw that piece of coal in with the thousands of other pieces of coal in the coal bin. And stealthily tip-toed back up to the living room.
When my dad came out to the living room he asked, "What all did Santa bring you?" So I started showing him this and that and when I got to the last of my long list of presents he said, "You sure he didn't bring you nothin' else?"
And I replied, "Nope, not unless there's something hidden somewhere."
Then he hit me with, "So you didn't get no lump of coal, huh?"
Son of a bitch. Why did he have to ask me that? Well, he was the last person I wanted to know that I got coal for Christmas so I HAD to lie.
"I guess not. I didn't see none. Only coal I know of is down in the coal bin." I lied.
Then a few years later when I finally discovered that the real Santa Claus is indeed your parents, he confronted me about that lump of coal I got back when I was 8. He had played me like Stephane Grappelli played a violin. He had my ass hook, line and sinker. It dawned on me that he knew all along cause he was the one who put the damn coal in my stocking to begin with!
Well, my father is gone now. But the last Christmas he was alive he still was telling folks about the year I got coal in my stocking. How I lied about it and tried to cover it up. And how a few years later he nailed my ass with it when I boldly told him there was no Santa Claus. He had forgotten a lot about his life by the time he was 86 but he never forgot that story. And wherever he is in eternity I'm sure he's still laughing about it. Me too.
9 comments:
Ya can't con the Old Man!
Uncle Carl was one of my favorite people in the world. I liked going to your house as a kid because Uncle C would always go into your room and bring out some cool ass toy for me to play with.
...and you CANNOT fool the Old Man. My biggest caught lie? I was leaving Mrs. Fan's house sometime between 1988-1990 around midnight. I was jamming to "Top Jimmy" by Van Halen and I was driving like Mario Andretti. I was coming down a long winding hill and paying more attention to the music than the road. Coming around the last turn there was a car stopped making a left and another car coming the other way making this car wait for the left. I was quickly approaching and there was no time to stop. I took it off road, hit a ditch HARD, got a little air, saw a tree pass me in slow motion and came to a rest in somebody's front yard. I sat there taking a mental check of my body when I saw a lady peel back her blinds to peer at me sitting in her front yard in my car. I turned it over, it started, I was gone. I could tell it was knocked out of alignment but I had a friend who could fix that. I was already thinking of covering my ass.
When I got home I pulled in the garage and took inventory. A nice dent on the front right quarter panel but that seemed to be it. Still A Dad was in bed as he worked early and Still A Mom had either already passed away or was in Magee Hospital. I called my gear head friend to come over and he tried to pound out the dent and it didn't work too well. The tire was also now flat.
When Still A Dad came home on his break I told him I hit a bad pothole the night before and now the tire was flat. He didn't have time to survey and went back to work. When he came home I was asleep. He woke me up and started to question me. I stuck to my guns about the pothole. He gave me plenty of chances to tell the truth. I stuck to my lie. He was setting me up. Finally out of total disgust he said "Ok, you hit a pothole. Then why don't you tell me why there's grass in your grill?" Shit! F Me. Ummmmm, ok, you got me. I was speechless so he added you may as well tell me, I already know and I surveyed the site. Dude drove the route between our house and Mrs. Fan's.
It's where I get my smarts from, Still A Dad. Nobody that knows the family would disagree. Still A Sis is no dummy either and we didn't get our gray matter from our mother's side of the family.
This reminds me, Dad, when I'm home for Christmas, let's tell Still A Stroke this story together. Maybe she'll learn from it.
Great Stories! Merry Christmas you guys!
When I was young my dad would set up the platform with the train and the people and we just loved it. My mom would tack on that brick cardboard stuff around the edge of the platform. Well, I would sneak downstairs to the freezer and take her Christmas cookies and then hide them under the platform - to play with the train, run over the play people, put tinsel on the track to make it spark and well, eat cookies. One day she noticed that a bunch were gone and was paying close attention to me. Finally she asked if I was taking the cookies "No Mom! I wouldn't do that!!!" Well, then she told me to open my mouth. I thought I was free and clear but nope, I just ate the hershey kiss cookie and there was still chocolate in my teeth. SOB! Busted.
Shit.
You know what's funny. I saved a lot of those cool ass toys of mine that your Uncle Carl let you play with. And now I'm giving them to my grandson this Christmas!
Now we know. It's never the crime that gets you. It's the cover-up.
i remember a few, but my memory is shakey and i could be confusing your stuff with my next door neighbor's.
i think it was the first time i saw stratego. i think there was a football game where you slid a black plastic silver dollar sized "record" into a player with a play on it. the defense then spun the disc to their play and you pressed play for the audio result. i remember a book about the three stooges that was definitely yours. i seem to remember another football game with overlays of plays and stuff. i could never figure it out. also remember a tabletop game like shuffleboard where you had plaastic rings with a silver marble in the middle and you rolled them against rubber bands at the end to score on the other side from where you started from.
Never had Stratego. But had a couple Stooges books. Biographical stuff with plenty of pictures.
The game you are referring to is NFL Strategy. It was an awesome game. You had 12 defensive plays and about 36 offensive ones. You slid cards with your play selection into a slot. That opened up widows which then displayed the statistical probablity of each play's suceess. The odds were different based on ball positioning on the hash marks as well. Anyway, the guy on offense flipped a ball on a spring to generate the random element. I've often wondered if they ever upgraded the game to reflect the modern game with, you know, Bruce Arians type of Shotgun formations with empty backfields you could call on third and one!
You just made me laugh out loud
Dog - I can SO hear your dad asking you about the coal! Made me smile.
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