I have no desire to criticize my daughter’s orthodontist because he’s my wife’s cousin and he put my daughter in a set of braces for a price that can’t be beat.
Her teeth were all over the place when he threw some braces on them at an age I didn’t realize they could do it at. I think she was six or just seven years old when she got them.
They were brutal…
Today, they are much better.
Ace in a retainer only now…
Alas, during a ride to the office for one of her many checkups, Ace shared with me that the orthodontist’s office was having a raffle for a brand new iPad and she was really excited to win it.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, good luck with that. I hope you win too.”
She was very nonchalant in responding that it would still be ok if she didn’t win, because it’s nearly Christmas and she’d just ask Santa to bring her one instead.
Ouch!
While our kids are definitely spoiled and we love them very much, we don’t $400 or more for a single gift item love them. We’ve always made that clear.
“Oh, Santa can’t bring you one of those, honey. No iPads from Santa, sorry,” I said without even thinking.
“Why not?” She wasn’t being pushy about it at all, and it’s in moments like this when I wonder if my daughter is fucking with me (I’ve had this same thought since this conversation too with respect to that stupid elf).
Part of me thought that she knows about the whole Santa thing and just wanted to hear what I’d pull out of my ass, but there was still the very real possibility that my eight year old still believed, and I had to think of something either way.
“The Buddhists,” is what I blurted out.
“What?” Ace asked.
“What?” My mouth asked, also curious as to what the brain was up to.
You see, Santa Claus and the North Pole have an exclusive contract with Buddhists and so he can’t deliver Apple products to Christians. The Buddhists have been around hundreds of years longer than the Christians, so really it’s just a familiarity thing at this point. Plus, I think the titanium, uranium, dipthalium used to make the processors is found abundantly in India and China, so…there’s that too.
“I got an iPod from Santa last year,” the little shit reminded me.
“So, I said that he couldn’t deliver iPADS.”
“No, you said Apple products, daddy. I heard you.”
Jesus, I thought. It always surprises me when anyone actually listens to anything I say, let alone my kids when I’m talking out my ass, but luckily, we had just pulled into the lot for the appointment and I was able to distract her by telling her to make sure she had whatever it was she needed for the appointment.
I spent much of her appointment time preparing for follow up questions such as how to respond to her inevitable request to convert to Buddhism or why some of her friends would no doubt get an iPad when they weren’t Buddhists either, but she must have lost interest and never did bring it up again.
This year though, she’s after an iPad mini. She’s such a good kid and I may or may not have borrowed $150 from her account at some point this year, so there’s a slight chance it could happen should all the stars align.
Whether or not she remembers our conversation, I’m not sure, but I’ve dusted off my old contract law book to brush up on contract amending and why it made business sense to Santa to expand his iPad distribution area, just in case.
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What say you? We spend an inordinate amount of time lying to the kids about the elf and Amazon boxes in the foyer and Santa. Is there a point in time when it’s easier to just tell the kid that the whole Santa thing was a hoax created to make them behave better or wait until they’ve figured it out on their own? I never cared as a kid and believed in Santa until I got married at 29 and the gifts stopped magically appearing. Do your kids still believe?
