Son of a Critch

by Mark Critch

  I’d come to this realization one Christmas Eve when I’d asked for a ride-on plastic motorcycle, the kind you push with your legs. I was awakened in the middle of the night by voices and a thumping sound. As any kid would be, I was convinced it was the big man himself. Because Newfoundland was the most easterly point in North America, Santa Claus came to St. John’s first. Everyone knew that. Now I faced an age-old childhood dilemma: get out of bed to sneak a peek at Santa and risk eternal damnation to the naughty list or try to go back to sleep, visions of sugar plums dancing in my head?

  There was no way I’d get back to sleep, and anyway, I had no idea what a sugar plum was. I tiptoed out of bed and gingerly made my way toward the thin crack of light around my bedroom door. Desperately trying not to make the hinge creak, my hand grasped the bevelled glass doorknob and I pulled it toward me. The house was still dark except for a solitary light in the living room. This was it. What was I going to say to him? “Hey, man. Nice to meet you. Love your work.” I’d “met” Santa Claus only twice before. Both times were at department stores and neither was the real deal.

  My mother had taken me to Woolco’s downtown to get my picture taken with Santa. Pictures with Santa are basically the same as a VIP backstage experience with a faded rock star. We stood in a long line for a sliver of conversation and the same photo everyone got, for a fee. It’s pretty much what fans pay top dollar for at a KISS concert. But instead of saying “Is it true your tongue is really a pig’s tongue” or “Can you sign my chest,” you beg for toys. Waiting to meet KISS but instead of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley it’s just whatever new guys are wearing Ace and Peter’s makeup these days is what a kid’s picture with Santa is like.

  Mom pushed me to the front of the line, saying, “Santa!​Santa! Yoo Hoo! Luh,Santa! Look! Mark’s​Here! You​Knows​His​Name,Santa! His​Name​Is​Mark! Yes! Mark! See,Mark? He​Knows​Your​Name​Already​So​That’s​How​You​Knows​It’s​The​Real​Santa! See?”

  But it wasn’t the real Santa. He did remind me of Christmas, though. This imposter reeked of booze—the smell of the season. His beard looked like a cat that belonged to a chain smoker, a yellow-stained white that somehow managed to be both long and wispy. It was attached to his lip with plainly visible invisible tape. When I asked him why his beard was taped on he said, “Oh, that’s because Santa is so old I need to keep my nose on with tape.” Comforting.

  His eyes didn’t twinkle. They were empty and teary. His nose had rosacea. He looked quite scary. The butt of a smoke he held tight in his teeth, he had six on top but just four beneath. He had a thin face. He was much too young. He shook when he coughed. What was wrong with his lungs? A wink of an eye and a nod of his head made me think “I don’t want you anywhere near my bed.” He spoke not a word. He hated his work. Would the odd “ho, ho, ho” kill you, ya jerk? And sticking a finger straight up his nose, he pulled something out and wiped it on his clothes. He looked right at me and he patted his lap. I ran out that door and said “to hell with this crap.”

  But now I was about to meet the real Santa Claus in my own house. I could hear him moving about under the tree. I froze in my tracks, terrified. “Good God. Pass me another screwdriver, would you? For the love of Christ! Why do they make these damn things so bloody complicated?” Santa was swearing! And by the sound of his accent, he was a Newfoundlander.

  “There’s only one screwdriver in the cookie tin, Dad.” Dad? I poked my head around the corner. Before me was a scene that Norman Rockwell would never paint. Under the red and green glow of the plastic tree’s lights, my father and brother were struggling to put together a plastic push-and-go motorcycle. My father had exhausted the contents of his cookie-tin tool kit and had turned to brute strength and blasphemy to force the thing together. I turned my back to the room and to the hopeful dreams of childhood. I had awoken a child, but I went back to sleep a man. To quote young Justin Trudeau at the funeral of his father, Pierre, “But now there is no Santa Claus.”

  “Santa’s paint never wears off.” That’s what the kindergarten boy in front of me was saying now. He was such a young five, this kid. I could remember being so young, so naive. Belief in an omnipotent, wish-granting, magical old man was behind me. I was in Catholic school now.

  “That’s because there’s no such thing as Santa.” I’d played the deadliest schoolyard card in the deck. I was the “Santa isn’t real” kid. I regretted it as soon as I said it, but there was no going back now. Day one and I was already the biggest asshole in school. Impressive. All three boys looked at me in stunned silence. They didn’t know what to say or do. I didn’t either. I wanted to take it back. I wanted the whole thing to just go away. “Whatever you do,” I thought, “just don’t say ‘Yes there is.’” I was hoping he’d drop it.

  “Yes there is,” the kid said defiantly, yet with the threat of tears in his voice. I could see it all coming. Once I’d convinced this kid that there was no Santa Claus, his Christmas would be ruined. I was a joy vampire, sucking the happiness out of him to make myself stronger. It was like having to put down a kitten with a hammer. But I had to make a stand. I couldn’t go through the rest of my life as a Pepsi-less Mrs. Flower. In this world, there were chickens and there were foxes. I needed to switch teams.

  “I saw my dad putting together my Christmas toys and my brother was helping him so there was no way Santa was there because he wouldn’t have let my brother see him.” I felt my voice start to waver. I’d never said these words aloud before, and in doing so now I was admitting that it was true. Santa was a big lie. The boys looked at me. I looked at the boys. Their lips started to vibrate the same way a guitar string does when plucked. Then their lips jiggled like a dropped bowl of Jell-O. I felt the tears coming inside of me, too. I couldn’t cry! I was being the bully here. As if taking a cue from a choir director, our heads tipped back, a short jolt of air was sucked down our gullets, and in unison we let loose a communal “Whaaaaaaa!”

  Like a wild animal playing dead or a turtle hiding inside its shell, a good, snot-dripping cry was the default reboot of any stressful childhood situation, an emotional version of unplugging something and then plugging it back in again.

  Mrs. Fowler begrudgingly wandered over to the play mat with the world-weariness of a woman who had and would spend much of her life wandering over to groups of crying children. She was a mother bird returning to a nest full of hungry hatchlings. But she didn’t bring a worm. She brought love. Unionized, summers off, fully pensioned love.

  “He-said-there-is-n’t-a-San-ta-Claus!” The boy was ratting me out in staccato sobs between short uncontrollable breaths as if a ghost were giving him the Heimlich.

  “There is! There is a Santa Claus,” I sobbed. I recanted everything. I swore allegiance to Père Noel, St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, even the Easter Bunny and all other false gods. I was in Salem and I could not bear the thought of burning at the stake. Mrs. Fowler comforted us half-heartedly, giving us a “Santa is the spirit of Christmas” speech that she’d obviously given a thousand times before. Then she separated us on the mat and said she’d be back in a moment. “There’s something I need to check on,” she said. Teachers were always checking on things. The “something” they needed to check on was their sanity. They’d check on it by going outside to inhale two cigarettes like they were a cure for cancer.

  I couldn’t bear to look at my Star Wars figures. Where once there was adventure I now saw only a store-bought toy denuded of paint. To keep my mind off my Santatheism I settled instead for making a gun out of Lego. I took my time, sorting through the blocks to find as many yellow ones as I could. Then I started to attach them, building the barrel out to the exact point where it would bend but not break off under its weight. It was an impressive piece. Nowadays, people say that playing with guns leads to violence. Back then, guns were an accepted form of play. In fact, they were the preferred choice for boys. Cap guns, water guns, BB guns, bows and arrows, swords—every boy had an arsenal at his di
sposal. The smoky smell of a freshly fired cap gun was addictive. You didn’t even really need a gun to get a high. Sometimes you’d just sit there hitting a roll of caps with a hammer. And if you forgot to bring your guns to school, you just stuck out an index finger, raised a thumb, and curled the other three fingers into your palm. This move would end in real-life conflict, however. Inevitably, two boys would face off on the playground for a shootout.

  I got you.

  No, you never.

  Yes I did.

  Didn’t. I ducked.

  You can’t duck a bullet.

  Superman can. I’m being Superman.

  You never said you were being Superman!

  Yes I did. I’m Superman and I ducked your bullet.

  Why would Superman duck, dummy? Bullets bounce off him.

  One boy would shove the other boy and the shoved boy would shove back. Shoving led to hitting and hitting led to bleeding. Yes, playing with guns did lead to violence. Just not gun-related.

  “Give me your gun. I wants that,” a familiar voice demanded. Fox towered over me. I’d been picked on, stolen from, laughed at, been made to question my holiday belief system, and cried. I’d reached my breaking point. There was no way he was getting my gun.

  “No,” I said in a voice I didn’t recognize. Fox seemed thrown off. Momentarily flustered, he stared down at me, coveting my impotent firearm. I couldn’t understand why he wanted it. Who was he, the sheriff of play mat town? Blocks surrounded us. You couldn’t move an inch in either direction without feeling the pain of having a dozen Legos jammed up into your foot. “Make your own,” I proposed.

  “I’m no good at blocks,” he confessed, a little too honestly for someone trying to intimidate. How could you not be good at blocks? You just made stuff. Even when the stuff you made didn’t look like the stuff it was supposed to be it was still whatever you said it was. If you said a misshapen pyramid was a rocket ship then it was a rocket ship. Even if you just stacked block upon block to make a giant block you could say it was a boat or a car and nobody was going to say it wasn’t. Who couldn’t make a gun? A gun was just an L shape. And if you couldn’t make an L shape then just make a 7 and turn it upside down. I looked up at him incredulously.

  Fox did what Foxes do. He took it. He reached down and pulled the gun by its elongated barrel. The blocks detached; now he was holding what could be either a Lego snake or a Lego stick. I was still holding the pistol grip, so I calmly reached down, picked up more blocks, and started rebuilding. Fox looked on, powerless. He looked at his Lego wiener for a second then threw it onto the mat. He seemed to find some satisfaction in watching it break into pieces. He couldn’t build things out of Lego, but he was pretty good at breaking them up.

  I got to my knees to head back to my desk. I’d had enough of Fox. I’d had enough of school in general. Maybe I’d have a nap after all. I was halfway up when he pushed me back down. I shouted out in pain. Not from the push—I had about twelve different pieces of Lego embedded in my back. I jumped up to my feet. By now, even the nappers had been awakened by this barehanded gunfight.

  “I want to fight you,” Fox declared in front of the whole class. I’d never fought anyone before. Except for my brother, no one had ever even shoved me. I’d seen Fox riddled with smacks from the bleached version of the Jackson 5. There was no way I was going to fight him. Yet the other kids had encircled us the way people and monkeys do whenever dominance is called into question.

  “Fight! Fight!” first one, then two, and now a chorus of voices began to chant. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” This couldn’t possibly be happening. Surely Mrs. Fowler was going to walk in any second and stop it. All I had to do was stand my ground until she came back. “Hit him, Fox!” a lone voice shouted. “Go, Fox!” cheered another. Soon the “Fight” chants were replaced by a unifying cry of “Fox! Fox! Fox!”

  He shoved me and I struggled to catch my footing as I hopped from Lego block to Dinky car to whatever they call those two wooden sticks they make you rub together in music class. I fell into the arms of some bystanders and my classmates pushed me right back to where Fox was standing. He shoved me again and the scene repeated over and over. This wasn’t too bad. It was mostly just my pride and my heels that were hurting. I could live like this.

  Suddenly I found myself in the centre of the mat. I’d fallen out of the “push, shove, catch, push” rhythm that had been saving me from having do anything. Now I was standing in front of Fox and neither one of us seemed to know what to do. “Hit him!” someone shouted. Surprisingly, it was a girl’s voice. It never occurred to me that she was addressing Fox, so I did it. I hit him. I leaned back and with all my strength threw my entire body weight, all forty pounds of me, behind the punch. I connected and he went down onto the kindergarten bed of nails that was the Lego-strewn play mat.

  The classroom went silent. Fox didn’t move, but he stared at me, befuddled. I didn’t know the rules of five-year-old fight club. It turned out that the first rule of five-year-old fight club is “no fighting.” My only experience with fighting was television. When Captain Kirk fought the Gorn lizard man he didn’t just push him; he whipped up a haymaker and gave it his all until his uniform was torn open. I didn’t know that kindergarten fighting was more of a “shove until someone makes you stop” experience.

  The girl who’d been Fox’s cheerleader pushed herself to the front of the group. She was hard as nails, with hair pulled back so tightly into a ponytail that you expected it to detach from her brow and fly backward across the room. “What’s your name again?” she asked. This time I had no trouble speaking up.

  “Mark,” I said. I sank to my knees and hit Fox again. He didn’t retaliate. I hit him a second time. Nothing. First one kid, then another, and then more said my name until the class chanted in unison.

  “Mark! Mark! Mark!” I sat atop my tormentor. School wasn’t so bad after all. I was in a Newfoundland production of Lord of the Flies and my Piggy was a Fox. I was lord of the b’ys. Then my reverie was broken by one of the most important kid-issued alerts, second only to “Car” during a game of street hockey. “Teacher,” a lone voice warned. In a mad scramble all the kids went back to their seats. I climbed off Fox and staggered back to my spot, drunk on adrenalin. For the first time I noticed that the ponytailed girl was sitting across from me. I wondered if she was always angry or just looked that way because her skin was pulled back tight as a drum by that hair elastic.

  “Nap time is over, Fox,” Mrs. Fowler announced to the sole occupant of the mat. He got up, pulling blocks off himself as he went, and silently took his seat. I tensed up for a few nervous moments, but it seemed as though nobody was going to tell. My relief was mixed with disappointment. I had just beaten a bully. Where was Howard Cosell when you needed him? “What happened to you?” Mrs. Fowler asked me. Oh my God! She knew, but how? Her eyes were fixated on my chest. First the ponytail girl, and now Mrs. Fowler—the ladies must love a tough guy.

  I looked down at my stomach. The buttons of my light blue school shirt had all popped open, revealing what looked like a white undershirt but what was in reality my bare skin. “I was hot, miss,” I covered in an act of cool deception, which must have impressed the ponytail girl because she smiled at me, causing a few stray hairs to break free from her mane.

  I was told to do my shirt back up, but my mother had always dressed me. I fumbled with my buttons helplessly as Mrs. Fowler addressed the class. The only worse fate would have been if she’d told me to tie my shoes. Shoelaces, buttons, neckties, all were a mystery. I’d never fastened anything by myself before. I mimed buttoning my shirt, hoping my teacher would get distracted and forget about it. Careful what you wish for.

  “We have a very special guest today, boys and girls. Someone is here to welcome you to the school. I’d like you all to stand and say hello to your school principal, Sister Margaret.” Mrs. Fowler stood, as did the whole class. I’d managed to get a middle button fastened and must have looked like a nudist in a ves
t. I was fooling no one. Sister Margaret had a stern look. As I watched her enter the room I could have sworn she floated in. Her uniform seemed darker than the ones worn by the other nuns, giving her the appearance of a black-and-white movie character somehow stuck in a colour world. That description explained her worldview as well.

  “Good afternoon, boys and girls,” she droned.

  “Good afternoon, Sister,” we droned back.

  “Be seated.” Desks slid on vinyl floors and bums landed on wooden seats, then there was silence. We could all feel the weight of the presence in the room. We knew she wasn’t someone to be messed with, but we didn’t know why. We didn’t need to know why. We just knew. I fiddled with the button that was hidden by my desk. She looked like the “no shirt, no service” type. “A St. Teresa’s student is a good boy or girl. At St. Teresa’s, students listen to their teacher and they do their work in silence, isn’t that right, boys and girls?” Was this a trick question? How could we be silent and answer it? I silently nodded. I wasn’t taking any chances with this nun. “Mrs. Fowler isn’t the only teacher in the classroom today. Do you know who else is teaching you at St. Teresa’s, boys and girls?”

  “God, Sister?” a kid on the far side of the classroom offered. I rolled my eyes. God was going to beam down to help me with colouring, was he? Or maybe Jesus would crawl down off the crucifix to teach us music class? Clearly, she means herself. Sister Margaret would be coming in occasionally to terrify us into learning our numbers or something. “What a tool that kid is,” I thought.

  “Yes,” Sister Margaret said. “God will be your teacher.” Holy crap! What was that job interview like? Past experience? All creation! Sounds great. When can you start? Sister Margaret continued. “God is all around us and he wants you to do well in kindergarten. But mostly, God wants you to behave. When you misbehave you don’t hurt Mrs. Fowler. You don’t hurt me. You only hurt two people. You hurt yourself and you hurt God. God loves you and yet you hurt him. You don’t want to hurt God, do you? No, of course not. Therefore, you must promise to behave. Will you do that for God, boys and girls?” Once again, the class chanted its answer in unison. I hadn’t hurt God. I’d hurt Fox. Had God seen me fight Fox? Had God helped me win? Why didn’t God tell my teacher to check back in on the classroom? Fox was going to be picking Lego out of his arse for a month. You’d think God would frown on that kind of thing. Maybe God stepped out when Mrs. Fowler did. Holy crap! Did God smoke, too?