Issue #39, December 22, 2006

Santa’s Big Mistake

Good and Bad Girls and Boys and the I Get Mine Machine

A Christmas fable to be Read Aloud to the Children of the Hamptons

By Dan Rattiner

After the cord snapped and the controller went flying into the screen, smashing it into a thousand pieces, Billy went running to his room crying.

“I just don’t know what to do about him,” father said, after returning from Billy’s bedroom door to the living room. Billy hadn’t let him in. Grandfather, who had been reading the newspaper, was looking at the broken TV screen in disbelief. There wasn’t going to be any more TV watching or game playing on this Christmas day.

“Let me try talking to him,” Grandfather said. And he set the paper down and padded down and knocked on Billy’s door.

“Who is it?” came the sobs from inside.

“Papa,” grandfather said.

“Okay,” said Billy.

And so grandfather went inside and sat at the foot of the bed where Billy lay.

“Am I in trouble?” Billy asked. His eyes were red from crying.

“I don’t think so,” grandfather said. “It was just an accident.”

“I could pay to fix the television. I could get a job.”

“You think this video game is trouble? Did I ever tell you about the trouble we had with the “I Get Mine” video game when I was a boy?”

“No.”

“Well, that was trouble. I don’t think anybody remembers it anymore. But Santa Claus remembers. Boy, he could never forget.”

“Oh?”

“You know, today, when Christmas comes, little kids get just about anything they want. But when I was a boy, there were good little boys and bad little boys. Only good little boys got Christmas presents.”

“What about girls?”

“There was no such thing as a bad girl. All of them were good. Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice.”

“Oh.”

“One year, there was a very rich man who owned a toy factory who lived down the street from us. He had a little boy named Charlie who hadn’t gotten the okay from Santa Claus. It wasn’t anything really bad that he did. It was borderline. Like once, he threw a snowball at a tree and it missed and broke a window. I was with him, but not the one who threw it so he was the one who got in trouble. It was really sad. I got presents. He didn’t. He just never seemed to make the grade.”

“And his dad owned the toy factory,” Billy said.

“His dad and mother really wanted to celebrate Christmas with their boy. And so the dad had an idea. He called up one of the scientists at his toy factory and he told them to make an I Get Mine machine. They did.”

“What was that?”

“It was a little machine, just about the size of the video game you got this morning, but it had a little magic wand in a holster on one side. You could take out the wand, point it at the fireplace, imagine what you wanted, press the button and there it would be.”

“Like if you wanted a pony?”

“Like if you wanted a pony.”

“And he’d poop all over the floor?”

“And he’d poop all over the floor.”

Billy giggled.

“But you’d clean it up. You’d wand a shovel. And there it would be.”

“So he gave this to Charlie?”

“Well, not exactly. First he had to persuade Santa Claus to let him do it. He wrote Santa a letter. He told him about the I Get Mine Machine idea. He’d made one. And he asked for permission to have his son test it out.”

“But……”

“Yes, Santa knew about the boy’s record. He knew everything of course. But Santa wrote back. And he said maybe your son could test this machine. Somebody has to test the machine, and if he did that and he did a good job and then on top of that was good the whole time until Christmas later that year, he, Santa Claus, would buy one hundred million I Get Mine machines for the children of the world from his father. And Charlie could have one too. This turned out to be the biggest mistake that Santa Claus ever made.”

“It was?”

“Well, not right away. So the rich man talked to Charlie, and Charlie agreed to this, he happily agreed to this, in fact he jumped up and down agreeing to this, and he even told me about it — I was sort of wondering if this could possibly be true and then he began being just as good as he could be.”

Grandfather leaned forward on the bed.

“So the scientists brought the machine over and they put it in the garage. And Charlie, with his father standing behind him, tried it out.”

“Were you there?”

“No. They thought it might be dangerous. But I was looking through a window. Charlie’s dad took out the wand, handed it to Charlie who closed his eyes, imagined a red bicycle……”

“How did you know it was a red bicycle?”

“You’ll see. And he pressed the button. And when he opened his eyes, there was a shiny red bicycle at the other end of the garage.”

“Didn’t he have a bicycle?”

“Nope. And so the dad walked over and wheeled it away and put it in a closet.”

“Why did he do that?”

“Because it was still two months before Christmas. If the boy were good, the bicycle would be his. And so would the I Get Mine Machine.”

“He’d get that too?”

“His father was going to be making a hundred million of them.”

“So was he good?”

“Oh was he ever so good. He was the goodest boy that ever was right up until he went to bed on Christmas Eve. And when he woke up on Christmas morning, there was the shiny red bicycle with a bow on it and in a small box right alongside it, the I Get Mine Machine.”

“So he could get whatever else he wanted?”

“No. That wasn’t the idea. He’d gotten the I Get Mine Machine as a present for THIS year so when Christmas came around the next year, he could imagine what he wanted, wave the wand, press the button and there it would be. A hundred million other boys and girls, good boys and girls, got I Get Mine machines that morning. And all of the machines came with instructions to wait one year before using them.”

“You think they were going to do that?”

“Well, that turned out to be the problem. No. The boys and girls everywhere did not wait. They opened the I Get Mine Machines and began playing them right then and there.”

“Did you get an I Get Mine Machine?”

“Of course.”

“And you started using yours right away?”

“I saw everybody else was doing it.”

Billy folded his arms. “I could have told them they were going to do that.”

Grandfather took out a tissue and wiped his eyeglasses. “I think Santa got distracted watching Charlie make sure he wasn’t ever a bad boy before that first Christmas.”

“Wow.”

“You have no idea how bad this got.”

“I bet.”

“Before Christmas Day was over, houses all around our town, all around the world were absolutely filled with Christmas presents. Good little boys. Bad little boys. Everybody got Christmas presents. It was terrible.”

“That’s terrible?”

“Only the good little boys got the I Get Mine Boxes, but the bad little boys, who didn’t, just asked the good little boys to use their I Get Mine Boxes to imagine I Get Mine Boxes for THEM. And so everybody got I Get Mine Boxes.”

“Gee.”

“There were gifts being opened all over the place. Hundreds of them millions of them, trillions. That was the best Christmas I ever had. Nobody was waiting for the next Christmas. All that gift-wrap, all those ribbons and bows, it was far more than any garbage company could take away. The wrapping paper just piled up and up and up. And then there were the model train sets, and the Betsy Wetsy dolls……”

“What’s a Betsy Wetsy doll?”

“It’s for girls. And baseball bats and footballs and little dresses and makeup kits and emerald shoes and puppies and jet skis and motorcycles and Star Wars light saber swords and dump trucks……”

“And ponies?”

“Hundreds of ponies. Thousands of ponies. And dogs and cats and goldfish. Millions of goldfish. I got a turtle. And ice cream. And baseball spikes. And ping pong ball guns. I had enough ping pong ball guns to outfit a whole army. The kids on our block could play the kids on the next block is what I had thought.”

“What could anybody do about all this?”

“The man who saved the day was Charlie’s father. He figured he’d started it all. He’d better finish what he started.”

“How did he do that?”

“He had his scientists build a Suck-Up-the-Toys Vacuum Cleaner. And he rushed up to the North Pole with it to show Santa Claus the very next day. Santa was hysterical. He had been running around, shouting at everybody, he had lost his “ho ho ho” and he could hardly even speak. He was in bed with a thermometer in his mouth.”

“What did Charlie’s dad say?”

“He said nothing. He just brought this little thing in and he turned it on, and he sucked the thermometer right out of Santa Claus’ mouth. Santa said build me one of these a hundred times bigger than this one and have it here by tonight. Can you do that? Charlie’s dad said he sure could. He came home and called the factory.”

“What did his son think of this?”

“He wasn’t happy about it. But he and I were too busy playing with Legos. We had built an entire city with them.”

“So what happened?”

“The next night, Santa took out his sleigh and reindeer at the North Pole and, for the first time, took them out into the sky all over the world on a night that was NOT Christmas.”

“Wow.”

“The children were sleeping. The parents were sleeping. The ponies were sleeping. And Santa sucked up all of the toys out off all the houses and into his giant Suck-Up-The-Toys Vacuum Cleaner and he took them back up to the North Pole where he put them into the biggest warehouse you have ever seen. And they would be given out, some of them, the next Christmas.”

“The ponies?”

“Some of them. There were so many he couldn’t give out all of them the next Christmas. Some of them are still up there today, working for Santa, hauling sleighs around when the reindeer are tired. Santa was very proud of them.”

“Couldn’t the kids just make more toys?”

Grandfather thought for a moment.

“Well, yes, they could have, except for one thing.”

“What was that?”

“When Santa finished sucking up all the toys and bringing them back to the North Pole, he went back, just before dawn and, using a special Suck-Up-the-Toys vacuum cleaner attachment, sucked up each and every one of the I Get Mine Machines. And he took them back to the North Pole.”

“And they are there today?”

“No. He returned them to the Charlie’s dad’s toy factory, saying that they were defective. You can do that if there is something wrong with something you buy. As long as you return them in thirty days and you have a receipt.”

“What’s defective?”

“Not working right.”

“But they WERE working right.”

“It was the IDEA of them that was not working right.”

“Like my video game.”

“Yes.”

“Do you smell apple pie?”

“Yes. I think your mother has just taken apple pie out of the oven.”

Billy jumped down off the bed. He was feeling better.

“What did Charlie’s dad do with all those I Get Mine Boxes?”

“It’s said he BURIED them.”

“Hmmm,” Billy said. “Weren’t you sad about all that when you woke up and you saw all the toys and I Get Mines gone?”