The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment (32 page)

’ve heard that self-deprecating humor is the best way to capture people’s hearts, so I am going to tell you another rather embarrassing story from my childhood. I believed in Santa Claus until I was twelve. That’s right, yuck it up. But before you start judging my aptitude, I want it on record that I felt something amiss four years prior.

At school, my sister and I heard other kids talking about how Santa wasn’t real, so we decided to set a trap to find out once and for all. Every year about a month before Christmas, presents would start showing up underneath our tree. All these presents were from our parents. Well, on Christmas morning, a new set of presents would arrive from Santa, but instead of placing them under the tree, he would place them on our chairs. He would put the presents intended for my sister on the chair she had picked, and he would place the presents intended for me on the chair I had chosen. Well, on Christmas Eve when I was eight, my sister and I told our parents that we decided to switch chairs. We had picked our chairs out months in advance, but the night before the big show, we told them that we’d had a change of heart. When we went upstairs, we looked up to the ceiling and told Santa to disregard what we had told our parents—that if he indeed existed, he should place the presents on the chairs we had originally chosen.

The next morning we came flying down the stairs. Sure enough, Santa had disregarded what we had told our parents. It was proof—irrefutable proof—that Santa existed. When the holidays were over, I returned to school and told all the naysayers that they could stuff it. Santa was real, and I refused to listen to anything to the contrary.

I held on to this belief for the next four years. I had seen news reports that covered Santas at local malls—they were fakes. I heard adults talking about how they had once believed in Santa—they were idiots. I had seen a drunk Santa’s beard fall off at a bus station—he should be strung up for mocking the God-like figure who brought me presents every year. I held on to Santa like he was my security blanket, straight into puberty. And then came the fateful day when I just couldn’t ignore all the evidence any longer.

“Mom,” I said one afternoon, “if I ask you a question, do you promise to tell me the truth?”

“Why sure, honey,” she said.

“I mean like promise-promise?”

“Yes,” she said. “I promise.”

I looked up at her with big, hopeful eyes. “Is Santa real?”

She hesitated for a moment, and it was the longest moment of my life. Then came the words. “No, sweetie, Santa isn’t real.”

My bottom lip, which was already growing a healthy amount of peach fuzz (remember, I was
twelve
), began to quiver. My defense mechanisms shot into overdrive.

“But years ago, we told you we switched chairs, and Santa got it right!”

“Oh, honey, your sister and you had your chairs picked out for months. When you told us you had changed chairs, we knew it was a trick.”

Upper lip doing the jitterbug.

She looked down at me and smiled. “Do you want to cry?”

“No,” I said, my voice cracking.

“It’s really OK if you cry. I cried when I found out.”

Yeah, there was only one minor difference. I was
twelve
!

Did tears start gushing down my cheeks? Did I run upstairs, jump under the covers, and sob into my pillow? Some things are better left unsaid.

The whole event proved so traumatic that I feel duty-bound to dispense with a few other myths that mess with the minds of my fellow Americans. Here are the facts (sorry to break it to you, but someone had to do it):

 

• The Easter Bunny does not exist.
  
 

• JFK was not a good president.
  
 

• Yes, the earth is getting warmer, but it is called summer and it is not your fault.
  
 

• The tooth fairy does not creep into your bedroom and put money under your pillow.
  
 

• Liberal men do in fact urinate; they just use the stalls because they have to pee sitting down.
  
 

• Once and for all, training with a gi does not make you a better fighter.
  

’m sure all of you have been patiently waiting for me to cover the topic of terrorists. Or, more important, what we should do with them once they are captured. The general consensus is that terrorists should be treated as enemy combatants, and dealt with accordingly. In an ideal world, this would mean swift military tribunals that are hopefully followed by even swifter death. But with many of these terrorist tribunals getting delayed because of red tape, and incarceration more hospitable than the terrorists deserve, I think there is a far better way of dealing with this scourge.

First off, terrorists are
not
in the military. They don’t represent a country or a national or political will. They don’t wear uniforms, declare war, or restrict their aggression to military targets, and their aim is not the acquisition of land or resources. Because of this, and the fact that they do not engage in combat, they don’t deserve the appellation “enemy combatants.”

What are they if not enemy combatants? They are criminals who target the weak, the unsuspecting, and the innocent for murder, by the cruelest possible means. With such a modus operandi, they do not merit the status of “prisoner of war” when they are discovered, dragged out of their filthy holes in the ground, and brought to detention centers. It does not, and should not, afford them the special privileges of private cells, huge security details, and a public forum for their beliefs. It does not, and should not, entitle them to the lead story on the evening news.