Hey...it's been a while since I last updated, but I still have a BUNCH more goals I've crossed off to write about. I can't fall asleep, so I decided to catch up on some of them.
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He's making a list, checking it twice... then going back ten years later and checking again.
#84: Open one of your old letters to Santa.
Background: my amazing mother keeps "brag books" from each year of my (productive) life... AKA since Nursery school... which contain various creations and achievements and awards I've garnered. As I went through the brag books a few years back, I noticed that in each one was a sealed envelope addressed to Santa. Naturally, I was intrigued and wanted to find out what I wished for when I was little.
In August, Mom and I decided to clean out my room so it would be ready for when school started. We literally dusted, organized, alphabetized, or flat out trashed every single thing in the entire room. (Needless to say, Iggy Pop the Piranha made the cut, while, sadly, my dried out gum collection did not.) When we got to my closet where the brag books were kept, I decided why not reward my hard (and much protested) work in cleaning by crossing an item off the list.
Mom wasn't sure there even were still any letters in the brag books, but I assured her that I had seen them on multiple occasions. I pulled out the brag books from Pre-K and Kindergarten and took those two letters out. The Pre-K one was in a red envelope with Mom's handwriting on it, neatly addressed to Santa Claus, North Pole, North Pole 00000. The other one... well, let's just say, the other one was special.
I could tell from the minute I pulled it out of the plastic sleeve in the brag book that the second letter, the one from Kindergarten, was the one I was supposed to open. It was in a white envelope on which I had written in my childish handwriting "SanTa" in big letters with a bunch of green and red holiday stamps of caroling bears wearing coats and scarves with Christmas-tree-light border stamps. It was very Christmasy, very innocent and very me.
Mom did not want me to rip the envelope, and understandably so, so I got to cross something off my unwritten "Things everyone HAS to do before they die at least once" list: using a letter opener. I got a quick and poorly-taught lesson on how to use it from Mom (she may be an amazing math and science teacher, but heaven help us if she tried to teach Home Ec). Then, Mom filmed me as I crossed the item off.
(I have the video somewhere on my hard drive... I'll find and post it later.)
I opened it up to find a folded piece of white paper with many more green and red stamps of the same designs all over the back. I flipped it over and read it allowed.
Dear Santa,
Could you please bring me ____(Look at video and type what it says)_______. Also, could I have lunch with you sometime? We could have leftovers.
Love, Nate
I laughed to tears at this. It was perfect. Only precocious little me would have, at 5 years old, wished as my big Christmas gift to have lunch with Santa. I can only picture myself, barely 4 feet tall, communicating with Santa's agents to organize a time that would work for both of us, meeting at a formal location, being served leftovers, and discussing many academic topics such as politics, religion, military tactics of the Elf Army, economic success of candy cane production, toy factory efficiency and quotas, worldwide concern over decrease in "holiday cheer", the negative image of Christmas portrayed by Ebeneezer Scrooge... Only me. The same kid who, the year before this, had hopped up on Santa's lap and told him that I wanted strawberry yogurt for Christmas.
[Looking back at the yogurt wish, I regret it sincerely. First of all, why strawberry? And secondly, YUCK... the doctors PRESCRIBED me yogurt earlier this year and I still didn't eat it. YOGURT? OF ALL THE FOODS! I couldn't have wished for Jell-O or Cool Whip instead???]
As I was saying though, the letter was absolutely perfect and helped kick up some old memories of childhood innocence and imagination. We think we lose those senses when we become adults, but we don't. They're still there as much as ever. We don't lose our wonderous childhood logic, but rather we just gain the reasoning of adulthood. Any adult could go and pick up the same action figures they used as a kid and make up adventures with them just the same... no laws of physics, no strings attached, just pure storytelling with adventure, imagination, and sincerity at the heart. (Some of the greatest plot twists come from childrens' minds... M. Night Shyamalan should take note. Tarzan's in trouble? Here comes Megatron to save the day! What's that? It's a bird... it's a plane... no, it's... Flying Tigger!)
You don't know to savor it when you're a child, so you feel you miss it when you are an adult, but truth be told it's all right there inside you just the same as it ever was. This goal helped me remember that. The childhood innocence is not a temporary gift; Christmas spirit is not a once-a-year feeling. If we lose that Christmas spirit, that childhood innocence, that sense of wonder about each and every aspect of life, then we lose the purest part of ourselves, and that's a gift far better than anything you can find under a tree.
Dear Santa,
This Christmas, help me remember that.
Love, Nate
(And P.S.- Don't you DARE bring me strawberry yogurt again. I'd honestly rather get coal. =P)
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