Pondering Santa

When it comes to Santa, there have always been several big questions that, when viewed with a critical eye, can call into question his entire existence. The most obvious one is: How on earth is he able to make all of those deliveries in a single night? I mean, sure, maybe he takes Mrs. Claus along so he can use the sleigh pool lane, but how much time would that actually buy him, anyway?

Another big question is how much does it cost to run his entire operation in a location as remote as the North Pole? Heating alone must be murder! How can he possibly afford it, considering he has no known source of income? Did he at some point win Powerball? Or does he just cook the books with devious accounting tricks that would make a crooked politician blush? Or does he supplement his income by occasionally going through Dad’s wallet once he’s finished dropping off presents?

Now, while these big questions are fun to think about, if you look beyond them and start getting into more of the nitty-gritty details, things get equally as interesting.

For example, Santa works one day a year. During the other 364, does he fly around in his sleigh just to keep in practice? Or does he spend the first quarter of his delivery run knocking off the rust, during which time he’s constantly slamming on the brakes, tailgating geese, drifting between lanes as he fiddles with the radio, accidentally peeling out on roofs, and even causing property damage. (“Hey! Who put that chimney there?”)

I also wonder about his bathroom breaks on Christmas Eve. Does he ever use the facilities at any of the houses he’s delivering presents to? (“Honey, are you in the bathroom?” “No.” “Then who’s saying ‘ho, ho, ho’ in there?”) It would seem tacky to do so, but time is of the essence in his profession, and perhaps certain liberties must be taken. Or maybe he uses public restrooms, which means that he could conceivably be the guy at Citgo who hands the bathroom key off to you? (“Oh great, I have to go in after him!?”) Or does he just risk getting arrested when nature calls and finds the nearest clump of trees?

All right, enough potty humor. On to more important things! Santa has a lot of deliveries to make, and judging by the U.S. Postal Service, this isn’t a business where you can expect flawless execution. (Come to think of it, maybe Santa’s fiscal model is taken directly from the USPS.) Anyway, does St. Nick ever screw up? Has he ever switched packages by mistake and given say, long underwear to a boy in Florida, while an old man in northern Minnesota gets action figures? (“Hey! I already have the Green Ranger!”) Or perhaps little Susie once received a pipe for Christmas? (“Yay! Now I can pretend I’m Grandpa!”) I mean, Santa’s getting old. He can’t be flawless, can he?

The list goes on:

Is naughty and nice measured on an absolute scale? Or is it relative to each person being considered? (“He still gave a lot of wedgies this year, but nowhere near as many as last. We’ll upgrade him to Nice!”)

How often does Santa rotate the runners on his sleigh? Does he carry extras in case he has a blowout on Christmas Eve? Or does he have AAA?

Is Mrs. Claus annoyed that Santa refuses to retire? (“Why do we still have to live up here? It’s impossible to get a tan!”)

Does Santa watch movies that include depictions of him, such as “The Santa Claus” or “Miracle on 34^th Street”? Does he ever mutter things such as, “Outrageous! I act nothing like this bozo!” Has he ever sued for defamation? Maybe that’s where he gets his money from…

“He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake…” Wait, does Santa work for the NSA? Or vice-versa? Now I’m creeped out.

On Current Meteorological Conditions And Macho Posturing

As anybody who lives in the Twin Cities will attest to, recently the weather’s been cold.

On second thought, the word “cold” doesn’t really accurately describe the magnitude of the plummet the temperature has taken. No, what’s really needed is truckload of compound adjectives, so let’s try it again:

As anybody who lives in the Twin Cities will attest to, recently the weather’s been bone-chilling, gas-line-freezing, shoulder-hunching, black-ice-forming, teeth-chattering, nose-running, eye-watering, huddle-by-a-fire-if-you-have-one-and-if-you-don’t-then-just-set-any-old-thing-ablaze-and-huddle-by-that cold.

Ah, much better.

Anyway, now that we’ve firmly established the meteorological conditions of the past few weeks, it’s time to move on to an anecdote.

I was at a Kwik Trip pumping gas when I noticed that one of my fellow patrons had elected to sit inside of her car while her tank was filling. This struck me as a good idea, mainly because I was pretty certain that my eyebrows were going to freeze and fall off at any moment. However, one thing stood in my way: I’m a guy, and in the unwritten guy rulebook it’s stated that you have to stand outside and tough out the weather when you’re pumping gas, lest you admit to the entire world that you’re a huge weenie – albeit one who would probably be a lot warmer and have full functionality of his fingers.

And so, fully ready to sacrifice my eyebrows, I toughed it out.

Fast-forward to the next occasion when I had to get gas. This time it was even colder. After stepping out of my car and basically turning into an instant Klondike bar, I decided that I had no problem admitting to the world that I was a huge weenie. Yup, I was going to wait in the car as my tank was filling, guy rulebook be darned. But then I saw a guy pumping gas a stall over, and he was standing outside tall and proud, completely toughing it out. He wasn’t even bundled up, and he didn’t even seem to be showing any signs of discomfort.

Feeling ashamed, I abandoned my plan to turn into a giant weenie. An unspoken challenge had been placed before me by the other guy, and I couldn’t just ignore it. If he could tough it out, then so could I! Plus, if I were to give up and wait in my warm car, he would then have every right to come over, steal my lunch money, and give me a noogie, and he'd be totally justified in doing so.

And so, I toughed it out yet again.

That’s just how guys operate. At least the stupid ones.

It reminds me of the time I was training for a half-marathon. The schedule called for a relatively short run of two miles or so. However, as soon as I began, a guy got on the treadmill next to me and also began to run. I watched him out of the corner of my eyes suspiciously.

When I hit two miles, I didn’t stop. This was because the guy next to me was still running. We’d started at just about the same time, and I wasn’t going to let him win! So I kept running, throwing the training schedule to the wind. Whether the guy next to me knew it or not, he was in for a battle! I was going to outlast him or get thrown off that treadmill trying!

And so, scoring major points for stupidity and competitions that may not actually be competitions, I outlasted him and emerged victorious.

Am I proud of myself? Not really.

But do I regret my decisions? Also, not really.

The unwritten guy rulebook is a very powerful thing, and sometimes I’m simply torn between logic and macho posturing. Maybe someday, something will tip it one way or the other. Perhaps it will hinge on if my eyebrows ever grow back.

Traffic Report

After much careful consideration and rational deliberation - which may or may not have included charts and graphs - I’ve come to the conclusion that the Twin Cities traffic report is a bunch of hogwash. (That’s a technical term for malarkey.) I think I always sort of knew, but this week it became abundantly clear in light of the snowstorm that blew into town.

But let me back up. Ever since I’ve moved to the Twin Cities, the traffic report has never once changed. The exact same four or five bad stretches are noted, with no variation, to the point where I wonder if they’re always replaying the same report from 1983, just to see how long they can go before somebody catches on.

Now, how helpful is that? Every day I’m told that 94 is jammed going into the Lowry Hill tunnel. Well, duh. Everybody who’s ever driven that stretch at rush hour knows it’s going to happen, so why even report it in the first place? Shouldn’t the traffic report tell you something that’s out of the ordinary? (“Miraculously, nobody is driving in the left lane ten miles an hour below the speed limit! It's like somebody Photoshopped real life!”)

In addition, I'm always told what highways are bad, but never how to avoid them. That’s sort of like telling somebody they’re on fire and refusing to dump water on them. I can see when I’m stuck in traffic! I know it because that’s when I’m driving two miles an hour, cursing like a sailor, and wishing that the country music played on the radio wasn’t so horrible these days. I don’t need any help with that! What I want is a way out, like the secret tunnel Homer got to use when he was a Stonecutter. But does the traffic report help me out? Nope!

That leads up to this week, when a storm dumped a fairly large amount of snow on the area, which basically paralyzed all traffic to the point where it was about as productive as Congress. That afternoon, as I was sitting on the freeway, a sea of brake lights stretched out in front of me, the traffic report came on. Aha! I though. This should finally be different!

But it wasn’t. It was exactly the same as usual.

Now how does that work? Not one car in entire metro is going over twenty-five, and the traffic report still doesn’t change? It they wanted to be honest, they should have just said: “Don’t even bother getting into your car. It will be faster to walk. Or crawl. Or wait for an earthquake to displace you.”

So I’ve given up on traffic reports. But that’s just fine, because there are traffic apps that can be used instead, which boast the added bonus of making you an even worse driver, since you’ll be too preoccupied checking on an accident to watch the road, which is when you’ll discover that the accident is actually you, since you were too busy playing on your phone to notice that you rear-ended a semi.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I need to start working from home. Or become a Stonecutter. Suggestion on how I can accomplish either would be appreciated.