Why Does Santa Smell Like Uncle Larry?

Life is full of moments that alter how we forever view the world, thanks to reality-shattering truths. Those harsh realities that don’t jive with what we’ve been telling ourselves or with what other people have been telling us. Finding out what we’ve been told is untrue is far worse than the lies we tell ourselves because with it brings the recognition of betrayal.

Long-paragraph-short: realizing you’ve been duped your whole life is a tough pill to swallow. Especially when the dupe involves Santa Claus.

Learning that a fat man in a red jump suit who has inexplicably escaped death for hundreds of years does NOT sneak into your house while you sleep is one thing (Sorry! SPOILER ALERT. I’m so bad with those), but after the dust settles, what stings the most is realizing your parents were the ones perpetuating the myth. A lot of kids usually find out from their friends, which means parents dig ourselves a hole right from the start. We want our kids to trust us and turn to us in times of trouble, yet their friends usually open their eyes to a massive lie that we started. Who would you turn to after that?

But parents aren’t the only ones to blame. Pretty much every part of society available for consumption to a non-Jewish kid is in on the lie. If we tried telling our offspring at a certain age that Santa isn’t real, that everyone they talk to and see on TV is full of bunk, that the guy at the mall is only there so he can pay his child support, it would be like telling them Kanye doesn’t exist.

“I don’t know, mom and dad. I see Mr. Kardashian’s face on all the supermarket tabloids, I hear his songs on the radio, and I’ve seen him give, like, eight speeches during something called the ‘VMAs,’ soooo… the only people who might agree with you are Taylor Swift and George W. Bush. Not exactly good company you’re keeping.”

It’s pretty illogical and totally counterproductive to have our kids believe in Santa Claus, but it’s out of our hands! It sure feels that way, at least. I’m sure the tide will turn eventually, as it always does. I’m sure there will one day be a collective understanding among parents not to tell their kids about him. It will probably start with the Millennials.

“Oh, we’re with our kids every minute of the day, including at school, even though they can’t see us due to the iHelmets we wear to ensure we never have to look anyone in the eye. We can just verbally instruct the device to upload messages to other iHelmet wearers. And we don’t let them play in any sports leagues that don’t give every child a participatory trophy. Of course, we don’t actually watch them play their games live, we only see the games, and the ensuing trophy presentations, through the screens in our iHelmets. Sure, it's a lot of screen time, but we don't own a TV. We don’t want to be “those” people. Since food no longer exists thanks to the elimination of gluten from every facet of the environment, their diets consist of nothing but vitamins and protein suppositories. Oh, and heavens to Betsy, we do NOT let them believe in Santa Claus.”

But the Millenials are probably onto something. After telling kids their whole lives not to lie, they come to find out we’ve lied to them their whole lives. And besides that, there’s something creepy about the notion that if strangers believe you are behaving properly, they will reward you for it.

Then again, that scenario plays out over and over again in all aspects of adult life. Maybe we’re not always rewarded for behaving properly, but we definitely avoid punishment by behaving properly, like at school, work, the airport, in front of police officers if you’re white (am I right?! [wink, wink]). Then there are times when strangers do in fact reward us for behaving properly. Usually the rewards consist of votes, job offers and, of course, sex.

Come to think of it, we spend our whole adult lives trying to get others to acknowledge our good behavior, so we might as well practice it while we're young. And, like finding out Santa is a lie, we might as well have our children get accustomed to not getting the recognition they deserve later in life. No matter how hard they work, or how well they perform, or how many sacrifices they make, they will never get the recognition they deserve!

NO MATTER WHERE THEY GO, OR WHO THEY TURN TO, THE WORLD WILL CONTINUE TO SHIT ON ALL THEIR HOPES AND DRE…

(Heavy panting)

(More panting while bent at the waist)

Excuse me. Where was I?

Oh right, Santa Claus.

To lie or not to lie?

Probably doesn’t matter.

I believed in him once and I turned out fine.

Dog People Have Gone Ape

I’m going to start this off by acknowledging that my own biases probably influenced how I viewed this as a kid, but when I was growing up, it seemed as if there was a collective understanding throughout society that owning a cat was weird. I mean, why would you? Cats are awful.

My bias probably developed from the fact that my family owned some kind of dog during most of my life. We never owned a cat, nor did we ever consider it, probably because no one in the family liked them.

But I clearly remember feeling a part of the majority. I certainly knew, and liked, people who owned cats, but most of my pet-owning friends and family members had dogs. And society as a whole seemed to own a dog, or at least agreed that they were fun and lovable. We bought paintings of them gambling, for crying out loud. “Awww. They have vices just like us!”

The president, no matter who it was, always owned a dog.

And we were constantly reminded of their greatness in books (Clifford, Where the Red Fern Grows), on TV (Rin Tin Tin, Lassie), and in movies (Benji, Lady & the Tramp, All Dogs Go To Heaven, Turner & Hooch, all those Beethoven sequels). One of the most famous dog movies, Old Yeller, ended with the dog getting shot after contracting rabies. And everyone who has seen it agrees that it’s one of the saddest movies ever. Hollywood wisely used a dog in the story so that packed theaters all across the country wouldn’t stand up and cheer at the sight of a cat being shot to death.

The only cat I remember holding a place in everyone’s collective consciousness was Garfield, which was a funny cartoon, but only because it depicted just how awful it is to own a cat.

The bottom line was: dogs saved kids from wells and cats got stuck in trees, which required being rescued by the fire department, which of course cost tax payers’ money.

Now, if owning a cat was weird, at the time it seemed a rather straightforward correlation that people who owned cats were weird. As Homer Simpson so acutely put it, cats are for “losers who live in apartments.” Even your sanity got called into question. Every town, including Springfield, had a woman who owned more than two cats, and everyone in those towns referred to her as the Crazy Cat Lady.

But mental health shortcomings aside, as I remember it, there were never actually negative traits that anyone associated with a cat owner. It simply had to do with the personalities of the pets – dogs are friendly, cats are not. It was that simple. As long as people kept their pets to three or fewer, there was no concern that either breed of owner was unstable.

Unfortunately that is no longer the case. Today’s generation of dog owners has absolutely lost its shit.

Now granted, cat people spend way too much time taking and uploading videos of their cats to YouTube. Videos the rest of us spend hours watching at work. But in order to see cats doing adorable things while we work, we have to rely on the internet because cat people don’t bring their cats to the office. You know why? Because there is no such thing as Bring Your Cat to Work Day.

I used to think the fact that Bring Your Cat to Work Day doesn’t exist is because non-cat owners would be too horrified by the notion, but the truth is, cat people never suggest a Bring Your Cat to Work Day. I’ve never even heard just one cat owner ask if they could pick a random day to bring in their cat, holiday or no holiday. And that’s because cat people are normal. (I just threw up a little.)

They have no desire to bring their pet to work, they know their pet has no desire to come to work, and they’re respectful of their co-workers who might otherwise have allergies or hang-ups about smelling cat piss. However, we’re about a month away from Tuesday permanently falling out of the week in place of Bring Your Dog to Work Day.

And since being away from our pets for 8-9 hours a day, 5 days a week, has gotten so hard, imagine how hard it is to go on vacation without them. Well, dog owners don’t imagine it. Not anymore. Going on a cross-country flight? No problem. Your dog doesn’t even have to ride with the luggage. Buy it a seat right next to you so it can shit in the aisle. And it will nervously shit in the aisle because like many people, dogs get a little freaked out when they ride on an airplane. But just keep telling yourself this isn’t what you want, it’s what he wants.

Maybe you sympathize with these folks by offering up the logic that it’s hard to be away from your pet for that long. Which is true. But what about the hour it takes to do your grocery shopping? Or the 10 minutes it takes to run into the post office? Doing both of those on the same day? Oh my God, then you have to bring your dog!

These days, if you know just a handful of dog owners, you likely know someone who loves their dog more than their kids or is in love with their dog more than they are with their spouse. You thought of at least one person instantly, didn’t you?

This is definitely a new phenomenon. It started innocently enough with the knitting of sweaters, but quickly grew into more intimate activities.

Remember the medical report that came out a couple of years ago that said it was bad for your health to let your dog sleep in your bed with you? Doctors didn’t release medical statements like that 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. That’s because the general public used to say things like, “I love my child more than life itself. I would do anything for her. I work at a job I hate so that she can have a better future and raise children that she will one day love as much as I love her. I also have a dog. He sleeps on the floor.”

Now the reverse is true.

If that’s not enough, we’ve all heard stories, some may be real, some not so much, of people using all varieties of food spread to, let’s say, “cajole” a dog into participating in activities it otherwise wouldn’t. I have never heard of anyone doing this with a cat. Ever. That alone is enough to say I wish I wasn’t a dog person. I don’t want anyone drawing any parallels between me and someone who would say, “I have peanut butter. I have a dog. I have plans for Saturday night.”

I wish I could say that dog people are getting dangerously close to surpassing cat people in terms of weirdness, but we eclipsed that threshold long ago. In fact, cat people should probably be insulted by that statement for insinuating they were ever weirder than the folks who take their pets to the hardware store, restaurants, ice cream shops, sporting events, shopping malls, etc… (sigh)

Like a certain surging GOP candidate, let's do all we can to end this trend.