I have two brothers. Both are younger than I. When I was probably 10 or 11, Brother #2 and myself decided it was high time to let Brother #3 in on the nasty little secret that “No Virginia, there is, in fact, no Santa.”
We both confirmed that Santa really was Mom and Dad.
Well, the little bugger would have none of it, so we proceeded, when my folks had gone out, to prove it.
We were now on a mission that previous years had found us just too timid to attempt to locate the hidden and previously wrapped Christmas presents. It was, after all, full-blown proof of there-is-no-Santa if we found the already wrapped gifts with tags that stated “From Santa” already on them, though there were two weeks left before the Big Day.
After about a half hour of searching where our parents might have stashed the gifts, we hit pay dirt and began to rejoice. Brother # 3 was quite angry, not at our parents for the deception, but at his two older Brothers, who were, at that moment, luxuriating among the various gifts, shaking and sizing them up in an attempt to discover their hidden contents.
“Hey,” I said to Brother #2, “this one’s yours, and it feels like a race track set!”
He picked up another gift and said, “And I think you’re going to get the BB gun.” (This is the present I had asked for each of the last five years.)
As we were going through the gifts, Brother #3 had disappeared, only to return with a handful of room-temperature butter. Then, sneaking around the corner, he lobbed the gelatinous mass at the two of us.
The yellow plasma managed to miss me, but just clipped Brother #2 on the shoulder. The remains, however, had spread themselves among the pile of gifts we had strewn about the floor.
Busted, we thought.
We new it would not take the likes of Five-0 or Dick Tracy to sleuth this one out and figured—since the butter had already blown our plan of carefully returning the gifts to their rightful hiding place—we’d return the favor.
We snuck upstairs, each of us with a full stick of butter, and began our return volleys. The battle lasted maybe ten minutes before we realized we now had pasted butter everywhere.
Brother #3 had a half-stick smeared in his hair, so Brother #2 and myself began to shampoo him about twelve times over in an attempt at a cover-up, knowing full well that, come Christmas Day, there would be some explaining to do.
But, Christmas Day, in our distorted childlike estimation, was still a lifetime away. Well, actually two weeks away. So none of us really worried as we cleaned up what we figured was all of the butter.
When the folks came home, it was right about our bedtime and we went upstairs like wonderful little angels.
Thinking we had beaten the rap, we were in bed no more than ten minutes when we heard Dad ask Mom, “Jacquie, do you have any idea how a great big clump of butter got itself up on top of the wall clock?”
Busted, we knew.
