The Year that Santa Stopped Existing

The Year that Santa Stopped Existing

             Every Christmas Eve we would all gather in the van, big green stinky ass hazard it was, the booger machine and other dumb ass nicknames our childhood friends had given the tank, and we would make the trip to a family members house, usually my 2nd cousin Sue (who despite being our second cousin, we all called Aunt Sue). It was me, my sisters, all four of them (well two were technically not sisters, they were my mom's live in boyfriend's daughters, but had been there for by this point, five maybe six years, I'm not sure on the full timeline really, a horrible thing to hear this early in a text about the authors own life, but hopefully writing it this way will help me remember), my mother and my step father. This was the way it worked just about every year, least from time I was 5 or 6 until I was about 12. It became a pretty reliable family tradition, although yes at the time, it was just the thing we did. Thirty years on from those trips, those family Christmas mean so much more.
              My childhood is complicated, more so than most of the people who were there with me even understand. I have only scatter shot memories of most of it, PTSD related according to many psychologists and therapists, most of the ones I do have are not all that pleasant, but again due to the other mental illnesses I have as well, I don't even know how much of the bad memories are really what happened, and how much of it was simply how my damaged psyche chose to deal with trauma. I tell you this because there might be a few things that I mention in here that are contradictory, and I'm fully aware that literally some of the events as I remember them could not have happened the way I remember them. I'm prepared to try to explain those situations as they come up to the best of my ability, but lets face facts true believer, you are listening to an unreliable at best narrator.

But I started to tell you about our Christmas traditions and the van for a reason after all, it wasn't Chekhov's Van I promise, like I said in most years we would take the Green Machine to Aunt Sue's gorgeous house (I loved her chandelier growing up, it was just magical, particularly when the lights from outside would reflect off of it, and my god they always had the most beautiful tree, I cant remember if it was real or they had a plastic one, but I'm leaning to it being fake for some reason, but was always so perfect, just felt festive and fun and even though I was but a kid, it felt old and comforting) but one year, 1989, this year we decided to take my mom's Monte Carlo (I think that is what it was, I didn't give a crap about cars as a kid and again memory is what it is, but in my mind its a Monte Carlo, 80 something model). No biggie, we were a large group(7 total) but were between age of 7 and 10 (plus two parents) so we could all squeeze in.

          Now, one thing I did forget to mention is that although Aunt Sue was the host it had a kinda pot luck thing going on, where certain people would bring certain things. It isn't a very remarkable thing for big family gatherings, but it is an important element in this story, because my mom had made something for us to take, I cant remember what it was in particular, my mom was a very good cook when she wanted to be, not the world's greatest but better than the average home cook, but i can not think of what the hell it would of been that she would make for a family gathering.
              She used to make the best enchiladas and when while she made amazing lasagna, I don't think either of them would have been the thing she took, I mean it was Phoenix and enchiladas wouldn't be out of the norm to be had but I think my (Great, in every sense of the word) Aunt Violet used to make her Chicken enchiladas with sour cream and don't think mom would of made the same thing, but I could be wrong. It was in a casserole dish with tin foil over top of it.
              So why are we talking about a casserole dish instead of Chekhov's van? As I said we were taking the Monte Carlo (which, remind me to tell you about the time we found out that it had breakaway seats in the back, but didn't like temps under 60 degrees) so unlike in the Green Machine we wouldn't have room to store the casserole dish on the floor or really even for one of us to hold it. No room in the inn on Christmas eve, sounds familiar, but digress... so we send the casserole around back to the stables...I mean to the trunk.

Now its important to note as I said it was 1988, so this would be my 8th Christmas. An 8 year old in 1988 isn't the same as an 8 year old in 2021 either, as the world and science have moved on the age at which certain things become common knowledge simply drops, which can be really negative as it forces kids to face things they shouldn't have too that young, but its good too cause the world is what it is, the earlier they learn that the earlier we can teach them how to handle it. But as I said a kid in 1965 isn't the same as a kid the same as the kid the same age in 1988 which isn't the same as the kid in 2021, times change.
              But anyway, in 1988 most 8 year olds still believed that some jolly fat guy dressed in red and riding around on a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer(including a red nosed one named Olive or Rudy, Go Irish!) would come to your house and give you some fun stuff to do until you piss your parents off and they took it away. 

   I was a smart kid, probably too smart. I was smart enough to see the problems in my household even when my parents thought they were hiding them, before the issues become too much to hide. Now I'm not saying none of my siblings had seen it, but we had rarely if ever discussed it,but I think I was aware of it probably slightly sooner than they were. I would read the newspaper from the age of about 7, and would watch the news regularly as early as 6 or 7 as well.

              I understood wrestling was staged by age of 7 (Duggan and Iron Sheik are at fault for that more than anything else, dumb asses got arrested together when one was a face the other a heel, my brain was able to work out the obvious that if they are friends when the camera isn't on then they are acting for it, if they acting then its planned), it was less my intelligence really than just being very observant and then asking why a whole lot.
              And its also important to note this was pre-internet days (I know the precursor the WWW system was in place and I would actually get online for the first time about a year after this, but it wasn't something the every day human thought about or had access to.) There was no Wikipedia or Ask Jeeves (lol member dat?) or even a Google or YouTube at this point. TV Networks would tongue and cheek report the Santa Tracker dead ass serious as if it was a terrorist attack. It was a different era to be a kid is what I'm getting at.
              But my point is at 8 years old I still believed in Santa, I mean I'm not saying I thought one guy delivered presents to every kid in the world, I had reasoned that each state or country had there own Santa rep that reported back to the guy in charge. (While I knew that Santa couldn't deliver to every kid in the world but thought one guy could do an entire state or a country like the Soviet Union, IDK, I guess I hadn't yet gathered the concept of scale) but regardless I thought that Santa was real.
              So what is the point of this incredibly long and horrible tangent about Santa Clause when we were talking about loading a casserole in the trunk? Calm down, we will get there, but before we do let me tell you bought this thing that happened during late 80s and early 90s that no one seems to remember, the great console war.
              I was there man, you weren't there, you weren't there man (and all my apologies and thanks to veterans, my joke there was in bad taste but was meant as a parody of the line delivery from Jacob's Ladder, a movie I highly recommend that handles the topic with way more class and dignity than I ever could imagine. I wasn't a soldier, so I am thankful for all who fought the good fight so that I could be free to make dumb ass jokes that come off in bad taste, If you were offended, I am sorry, but maybe my writing isn't going to be for you no, hard feelings?). Nintendo fan boys would gather up at lunch break and go around shanking the cool innocent Sega kids. Everyone ignored the Atari fanboys (and no one knew what the fuck the kid talking about TurboGrafix was rambling about, he kept hitting his head on the wall yelling BONK, he was way too Gnarly), but anyways 1988 was early days of the 2nd Offensive of the Great Console War, see Atari had already fought through the Great War of 82 and unfortunately it was a Pyrrhic victory. They won, by in order to do so they destroyed the industry, flooding it with shite games and dropping prices and stock so fast that stores and by extension the consumers had lost all faith in the industry. Atari fought on but in the following years Nintendo had become the market leader and had all but pushed Atari from relevancy by this point, but from the far west of Hawaii came Sega (I wish I could find out how to phrase it in a way you knew that I was doing the version of the “Sega” jingle from Sonic intro) first with the kinda failure of the Master System (in Us it was not a great seller and very few kids had one in the area I grew up in, although oddly one of my good friends (well kid that hung around with me more because he thought my sister was cute and shit) Stephen the Heathen’s family had one (and a NES, and 7800, and eventually a Sega Gen and I'm pretty sure a AES, I don't have the slightest idea what it was either of his parents did but they sure spent cash) and I had enjoyed it, but this isn't about the Master System, its about the one that started the biggest Console war, its about Sega doing what Nintendon’t. See in August of 89 Sega released the Genesis unto North America. A 16 bit(!!!) powerhouse that just smashed the NES power wise, and I can not explain this to you in a way that you will understand if you were not there but it completely destroyed everything else visually. I had to have it.
              See I was a big video game nerd. I had been playing video games since at least 1984, during the Video Game Crash of 83, before the build back happened my mom’s boyfriend picked up an Atari 2600 and a half dozen games from a pawn shop (that is what we were told at the time, but I heard rumblings way back then that it might have been stolen and he bought it from a friend, either way I really don't think he stole it, not that he wouldn't ever steal but video games were not something valuable enough to steal like that in 1984 for him, he would of taken tools or something he would of gotten use out of, I don't really have the best memories of him and much of the pain in my life he is either directly or indirectly responsible for, by acting like he was the devil doing evil just to do evil at all times, well that isn't the memory I have, he was no angel as I have stated, but that doesn't make him a devil either, for years in my mind he was, but that isn't the truth), and when he hooked it up, I was instantly addicted. Breakout, Pitfall and Asteroids became what I wanted to do (as long as GI Joe, Thundercats and MOTU were not on.) and I became a gamer before gamer was a thing. My family transitioned to an NES in late 86, I think we got that for Christmas too, and while it was for the family, I had it on my TV when I finally got my one room. I was a gamer and had fallen in love with Mario, Zelda (yeah I didn't realize Princess Zelda was who the game was named after, bright but it went right over my head, not cause sexists reasons as some would imply, I just hadn't played a game at that point that was named after a character other than the main character (that I was area of, I called Samus Metroid and the guys from Contra were Contra Bill and Contra Lance. I knew Samus was a female and it made no difference, I played Barbies with my sisters, think I gave a shit if the character on my screen killing aliens and kicking ass peed sitting down? I didn't care, I wanted to kick ass and save people) and all the other great NES games. But by the time the Genesis had launched, I had to have it, more than half my life had been waiting for this thing.
        But we couldn't afford it.
        Five kids and life meant we wouldn't get it this year, not the end of the world, funny enough the previous year I had gotten a bunch of GI Joes(as I would again this year), but for this one, my mom had stuffed them in a box for a lamp, I guess thinking I would be disappointed by it, I wasn't, I was excited for my new lamp, she had to tell me to open it up and check it out, it had Joes in it, way cooler and I enjoyed them, but I would of loved used rocks, I cared that it was something new for my imagination to create with, what it was wasn't the important thing, not saying I didn't want certain toys, but I had less of an expectation that I would get them than a hope that I would.
        So no Genesis would be had this year, no biggie, was looking forward to getting some new Joes, maybe some MOTU stuff even though it wasn't really doing great by the time, I didn't really collect Transformers, was big into sports cards, and if I'm not mistaken I got some NBA Hoops cards this year too, but I always had plenty of toys and games and stuff as a kid. At least until near the end, our issues in the house weren't financial (I mean yeah sometimes they borrowed money, but we weren't living on the street, we might of been dodging calls from collectors but we weren't going into witness protection to get away from them), they were a matter of safety and well being, but that isn't what this story is about, least not this chapter of it.
        So here we are, I'm putting the casserole of unknown nature into the trunk, carrying it out for my mom because she had bags in her other hand (and her arm had been damaged by falling through a sliding glass shower door), now I don't remember what the girls or Perry were doing maybe grabbing something else, maybe already in car, its not even important, but anyway we are at the trunk, wait, I think Perry was in driver seat already because I'm pretty sure he popped the trunk. Anyway we are at trunk, it gets opened (If Perry didn't do that then a wizard named Simon did it), and as I go to put the Unknown Casserole into its tomb, I look down and what is it I see? A Toys R Us bag with a black box that says Sega on it. I look up at my mom and she has utter holy shit oh noes! look on her face and says “please don't tell, don't ruin it for everyone else.”
        Those words would have so much meaning in my life. Ive heard them about a few different things, from a few different people, Ive asked it from different people. At no point where any of those a fair thing to do. I can understand why it was asked this time and bare no ill will towards it in this case, just the fact that those words would become the arc words of my life, and the first time I heard them it was over Santa Clause. Its so strange that Id start my story here, but in many ways this is were it started, me getting something I desperately wanted and all I had to do is give up a little bit of my innocence.