My friend Dave has a weird daughter. There's nothing anyone can do about that and I don't think anyone should try. She is, after all, smart, inquisitive and thoughtful. There's no reason to fuck with her head just because she sees the world a little differently than others. But the school system wants her to talk to her guidance counselor because the school system seems to think that Debbie (that's the little girl's fake name for the purpose of this blog) may suffer from some kind of emotional dysfunction, namely because she hates Santa Claus.
Now, you're probably thinking that it is weird for a little girl, especially one who never suffered from poverty or wanted for anything beyond a pony, to hate Jolly Old St. Nick. And I understand. The Great Red One brings kids toys for free and all he asks for in return are some milk and cookies. He's a great guy, and I can dig that, but check out why Debbie hates Santa.
She thinks he's racist.
Like many Tampa public school students, Debbie lives in neighborhoods and attends classes with people of many different ethnic backgrounds, mainly Hispanic and African Americans, but I'm sure there are others as well.
Anyway, Debbie found out what many of her poorer friends got for Christmas, and she decided that Santa really screwed them over. She knew some of these kids really well and she has told me that most of them were, she said, whispering, “better than I was last year.”
Now, my first instinct was to tell the child that she had no real way of knowing how good her friends were, but I didn't want to lead down that path. The last thing I wanted her to do was make a connection between bad people and minorities solely because I tried to help. I've learned that bad things happen when I try to help.
So, after thinking it over a little while, I told her that I'm sure Santa had his reasons.
“Sure,” she said. “He's racist.”
I laughed, told her that wasn't so, then walked away to drink a beer with her dad.
Dave told me, two days later, that Debbie wrote a letter to Santa and showed it to her teacher. The letter stated, basically, that Santa was a racist bastard and deserved to rot in hell for screwing over good children based entirely on race. For this, the school wants her to see a guidance counselor.
“Wow,” I said to Dave after he finished telling me this story. “What are you gonna do?”
And Dave said, “You know? fuck it. I'm just gonna tell her he's not real. I mean, ‘not real' is better than ‘racist', right?”
“I have no idea how to answer that question,” I responded. “So I'm not gonna.”
Good luck, Dave.