The Holly, Jolly Surveillance State
These days, many of us find ourselves living in a state of near constant surveillance. Our every move watched, recorded, and reported. I am talking, of course, of that malicious little imp known as the Elf on the Shelf.
Over the last two decades, these nosy little North Pole snitches have set up shop in our homes from Thanksgiving night until Christmas Eve. While I would like to tell these red suited hooligans to take a hike back up to iceberg city, I cannot. With kids in the house, Santa’s Little Helper from Hell gets a front row seat to our lives for the month.
That being said, the smirking smurf is really here to report on the behavior of the children, and not me. So, I really don’t change my ways at all in his presence. Given that fact, here are three things Santa’s CI has definitely reported about me.
I Create Profanities.
While I keep “The Gimme A Minute” Substack PG, if you know me IRL (in real life as the kids would say), I love all of the four letter words with a passion. I am proud of my ability to arrange profanities in new and interesting ways, especially when I am angry. Unfortunately, I can’t give you any examples here to keep my squeaky clean imagine. But rest assured, after watching me try to put up a Christmas tree or untangle some lights, that freeloading elf has made Old Kris Kringle blush reading the transcript.
I’m the One Who Knocks.
Well, I am not exactly Walter White. But, I am the one who knocked over the dog’s bowl. And, I’m the one who didn’t close the freezer the whole way. I’m also the one who forgot to take the dog out and she had an accident. Look, I make a lot of mistakes in life, and generally speaking I own them. But, some of these small mistakes around the house, I just pass them off on someone else. How mad can my wife be if she thinks the two-year-old knocked over the dog bowl and made a mess? That’s what gremlins do. How mad would she be if she knew it was her forty-four-year-old husband who knocked it over and didn’t bother to clean it up?
The toy-maker school drop out might tattle to Santa, but the big man knows how to keep a secret.
I Eat Cookies for Breakfast.
During the week, I am up incredibly early. I creep around the house in the dark as quietly as possible to let people sleep. My job starts early, and I work out in the morning, so I am up hours before dawn. Even on the weekends, I am generally up early. And, while I like to wait a little for breakfast, and generally exercise before eating, my wife is also an excellent baker. And, so there are often cookies, or other sweet treats in the house. Would I let my kids eat cookies in the morning, certainly not my older ones. But, I’ve seen that smirking little tattle tale peering at me through the dark as I sneak a snickerdoodle at 4:30 am. Go ahead, tell Jolly Old Saint Nick, that guy lives on a diet of cookies and milk. Who is he to judge?
We all just have to accept these stool pigeons on the shelf have all kinds of embarrassing information on us. They see us running around the house in a towel when we realize we don’t have any clean underwear in the dresser. They see us slip a ten dollar bill out of the kid’s piggy bank when we just don’t feel like stopping at the ATM. They told Santa how we skipped half the pages while reading our kids that Dr. Seuss book last night. The sooner we can accept this, the sooner we can just get back to living like normal during the holiday season.
In the end, the Elf.B.I agent is the one that really loses out in all of this. One day my kids will be grown, but he will have the image of me eating a cookie while roaming around my house in my underwear looking for my clean pants burned into his memory forever.
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