The christmas right before I turned 5
My birthday is in january, my sister's birthday is in november, so she had just turned 5 and I was going to turn 5 in about 3 weeks.
we woke up early in the morning, at like 4am, and I suggested we go open presents. My sister wanted to wait, but I said we could at least go into the living room. My parents weren't awake. I thought they would not like to be woken up at 4am. I said we could open the presents that were from Santa, because those presents have nothing to do with our parents (I would have actually called them "my mom and daddy" because my mom is not my sister's mom.); the person who gave us the presents should be there to watch, and presumably Santa could see us using whatever magic powers he had. So we opened the stockings and the presents that said they were from Santa. (My mom claims we also opened the presents that said they were from her and daddy, but I don't remember it that way.) Some time later, my parents came into the living room, wondering what all the noise was, and they saw us playing with the presents, and my mom was all :O and I was indignant and confused about why she even cared. I said, "They're not from you." My dad laughed incredulously (and I now understand why) and my mom started to say something like "yes they are from me". She stopped herself before finishing the sentence, but the bit she did say combined with her breaking down into tears gave it away: The presents WERE from her. I looked around at all the open presents, and then started telling her how much I liked this and that.
I was so overwhelmed by her sadness and trying to make her feel better, I forgot to be mad that my parents lied to me.
I moved on from the issue and didn't say anything about it for a while. I had my birthday party a few weeks later, and I got garfield pajamas. My mom suggested I try them on, so I went to my room to change, and then I ran back into the living room and hopped into her lap, on the couch, and said
"Is santa real?"
"What do you think?" she asked singsongily.
"Well ... you can't see him, which means he's invisible, which means he's a ghost, and ghosts aren't real, so that means santa isn't real."
"OK, if that's what you think."
"Yes," I said, scrutinizing her face for more confirmation, and getting nothing.
I was annoyed by her lack of answer, but I was also pretty sure that if santa were real, she would have just told me he was real.
Later, like the same day or the next day, I asked my dad the same thing.
"Is santa real?"
He laughed through his nose and said "No," shaking his head.
It seemed like maybe he thought I was ridiculous for ever believing it, but I was more interested in ascertaining the truth than defending myself.
"What about the tooth fairy? and the easter bunny?"
He laughed and shook his head again. "No."
"Is any of that stuff real?"
"No."
"OK. That's what I thought but I just wanted to make sure."
Almost a year later, as the next christmas approached, my mom asked me if I wanted to make a list for santa. For a second I was about to say, "What? Of course not, I know that santa isn't real now." But I hesitated and then I decided that it could be fun to do it even though it's not real. So I said Yeah, kind of excited. I put a lot of effort into the list. I was smiling and laughing the whole time, and my mom was too. I thought we were both laughing at the joke, at the fact that I was writing a letter to an imaginary person, but I found out years later that she thought I actually still believed santa was real at that time. Like, what, she thought I forgot all about the previous christmas? about the time when I asked her if santa was real and she didn't just fucking answer me?
When I was 7, it was easter, or the day we were doing easter, and she said to me and my sister that we should go outside so the easter bunny could come. We went out and came back a while later. As we walked in, I said
"Are you done hiding eggs?"
And she said something like "what, it's not me, it's the easter bunny".
and I was like ok enough of this shit. I know that there is no easter bunny. I know that there is no santa. I know that there is no tooth fairy. I know it is you doing these things.
And I think that was the point at which she finally gave in and stopped pretending that I still believed.
Why did she want me to believe lies? She was upset that I thought the presents weren't from her, but she kept pretending after that that I still believed that.
She also kept asking me to take pictures with santa and stuff, but after that I just started refusing to do it, because I didn't want to feed any remaining delusion.
My brother was born when I was 6. The christmas and easter stuff wasn't important for a while, because he was a baby and didn't know what was going on. My mom telling him that santa brought him a thing didn't feel like a lie because I didn't think he even understood the words. He was a baby for a lot longer than most people because of his autism.
The first time I remember it mattering was when we lived in Lubbock. My mom "hid" eggs for my brother. We moved to lubbock on may 31st 1998. That was after easter. Maybe we did easter late that year, or maybe what I'm remembering happened in 1999. Anyway, the eggs were just sitting around in plain sight. We handed him a basket and told him over and over again what he was supposed to do, and led him around the house and pointed out eggs and told him to put them in the basket and he followed us around in a daze apparently having absolutely no idea what was going on. And my mom told him that the easter bunny brought the eggs, and I shouted that she was lying and it was actually her that did everything, and she gave me a look like you'd give someone if they were telling a 5-year-old that their dog did not die peacefully in their sleep but had in fact been in agony for months, and I was like "what, i'm not going to help you lie to my brother", but really it was all pointless because he had NO idea what was going on.
But he did end up figuring out how easter and christmas worked after that, and he believed my mom. I told him every time it came up that she was lying. I told him every facet of the truth. I told him how I figured out santa wasn't real, and how our sister figured it out (which happened the christmas she was 6, but I didn't include that story in this post), and how when I asked daddy if santa and the tooth fairy and the easter bunny were real, he just flat out told me No they are not real. I told him to ask daddy himself. But he never did. He said he didn't think mommy would lie to him. When some of his classmates said that santa wasn't real, he mentioned it to her, and she asked what he thought, and he said "I think he's real," and she said "OK.". And he still continued to think santa was real for YEARS after that.
My brother is supposed to be a genius.
They thought he might be retarded in kindergarten, so they gave him an IQ test, and he scored a 184.
He's supposed to be a genius, and he didn't believe that his mother could lie to him.
He's supposed to be a genius and he fell for "what do you think" and "ok".
He's supposed to be a genius and he believed santa was real until he was 10.
Maybe IQ tests are bullshit.
This is not where I thought this post was going.
