Dearest Rachel –
I hardly need to remind you about events like Crazy Hair Night at Sparks; it was one of those ‘theme’ nights that you always used to make a point of participating in…
As for myself, I didn’t throw myself into these theme nights with your level of abandon. Part of this was due to the fact that some of them – like “team color” nights, for example – didn’t (and don’t) apply to me. I’m not in charge of any of the groups of kids, on any team; as a record-keeper for the club, it’s actually incumbent upon me not to show favoritism to one team or another. Besides, these days, we’re required to wear these pale blue shirts to indicate that we’re volunteer staff, and not some rando wandering around the church who shouldn’t be. Yeah, that’s a concern; not so much at our location as in society at large, so these ‘uniforms’ are as much a security precaution as anything else.
But it does give me an excuse to distance myself from participating in this or that theme. You’d probably be disappointed in me, although not particularly surprised, as I’ve never been much to get into the whole cosplay thing. I know how ridiculous I look in costume, and as a result, I never really got into them, as a rule, for any reason.
This evening, however, it occurred to me that I actually had a bit of costume that I could use to actually get involved with the goings-on of the evening. For the life of me, I can’t recall why I got my hands on a judicial perruque at some point, but I had recalled it sitting on one of the racks in the closet, and since the night called for something like this, I thought, “eh, what the heck; I don’t get enough use out of these things anyway,” and put it on before driving off for last night’s club.
However, we had a new clubber in last evening who was… well, unaccustomed to the place. I don’t know how much to say about him – most of what I learned later was second- or third-hand, so I can’t vouch for its veracity, and in any event, it’s not the sort of thing that ought to be told. What I can say was that he was both rambunctious and largely unintelligible. Diana and I frequently caught ourselves looking at each other with “did you catch what he said? no?” expressions on our faces. You would have found it rather funny to see us at a loss as to how to deal with him.
Which, by the way, was part of the problem, too; we were dealing with him because he was a bit more of a handful than his team leader could handle, especially since her table was already full of more kids than anyone else’s. So she sent him to us, in part because he needed his introductory booklet (and we were sitting on the supply), but also to see if we could keep him occupied and out of her… uh, hair.
As it turned out, it was my hair that helped keep him out of hers. It so happens that, between the perruque and my newly grown-out beard, the kid recognized me… as Santa Claus. And in hindsight, I probably should have leaned into it; he certainly struck me as the sort who, if he believed I was the Santa Claus, I could instruct him to be “a good little boy,” and set the particulars as to what that might entail. I could have gotten him to behave perfectly, had I decided to play the part he had cast me in.
But if there really is a Santa Claus, Virginia, I was not about to claim the mantle. At first, in fact, I didn’t realize he was even doing it, as I couldn’t make out what he was saying. However, at some point, “Santa Claus” was almost the only intelligible thing I could understand from him, and I realized what he meant; even then, I actually thought he was making fun of it. I’m still not entirely sure if he really believed I was him, or if he was having a laugh at the wig. Either way, I wanted no part of the role he’d somehow assigned me.
They say that a man’s stage in life can be measured in his relationship to Santa Claus; first, you believe in him; then, you don’t; then, you play him (whether in practice, by being the main gift-giver, or by literally dressing up as him); and finally, you just look like him, whether you act like him or not. I may have been just complaining about how difficult it can be to try to play his role, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to move on to the next stage of my life. Still, if a little kid sees me as such, there isn’t a whole lot I can do about it; and I suppose if you squint a bit, he’s not entirely wrong.
Now, if only I’d thought to leverage that appearance to get him to behave better…
Be that as it may, I still have to get back to stage three behavior, honey. For now, I’d appreciate if you could keep an eye on me, and wish me luck, as I’m going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 