A few days before my Arrival, it occurred to me that I’d never actually delivered Santa’s trademark greeting—the “ho-ho-ho”—before in my life. I panicked, imagining myself stepping down from my antique fire truck, a sack of toys thrown over my shoulder, with dozens of children flocking around me the same way that women always flocked to Rod Stewart in his MTV videos. Then, I’d take a deep breath, rear back, open my mouth, and nothing—not a sound—would come out. (more…)
My parents and I were quite skilled when it came to ignoring TV commercials. But that night, as we watched television together in the living room, a commercial advertising the Penn-Can Mall caught our attention. “Hey kids!” the excited announcer said. “Santa Claus is coming to the Penn-Can Mall this Saturday morning at 10 a.m.!” Suddenly, it dawned on me that what this commercial was referring to me. (more…)
Gerta phoned me later that week to tell me that I’d been assigned to the Penn-Can Mall in the town of Cicero, just north of Syracuse. “Congratulations!” she said. But I was crestfallen. In the hierarchy of Central New York malls, there wasn’t a more down-on-its-luck mall than the Penn-Can. “Is that place still even open?” I asked, not bothering to hide my disappointment. The last time I’d been to Penn-Can, fountains had been drained, ferns had yellowed, and water stains had ringed the ceiling tiles around the skylights. Newer, sleeker malls like the Great Northern and the Carousel Center…
Gerta began ushering applicants one by one through an office door where she and an Ichabod Crane-like man in a pinstriped suit would determine if these individuals were Santa Squad material or not. Five minutes after the door would close, the door would open again, the applicant would emerge, and Gerta would usher in the next person. I was sitting with the Elves, even though, in my heart, I still felt certain that I was a Santa. The Elves were predominantly short men and women, several of whom smelled strongly of alcohol despite the early hour. One of the Elf…
The telephone number belonged to a New Jersey-based company named Blossom Hills. An overly excited Blossom Hills representative named Florence explained to me over the phone that her company specialized in “making holiday magic.” It went about accomplishing this incredible feat by placing something called “Santa Squads” in every shopping mall in every State from Maryland to Maine. “A Santa Squad’s job is to bring joy to children of all ages wherever it goes,” Florence said. Each squad consisted of three members: Helper Elf, Photographer Elf, and Santa. Before Florence could even finish asking which Squad member I was interested…
Staff members began to disappear at the end of August. One by one, they’d hang up their short pants and suspenders—or, if they were ladies, they’d hang up their pastel-colored, hoop-skirted dresses—say their goodbyes, then punch out for the last time and make their mass exodus back to school. I’d routinely departed with the end-of-August college crowd every year. But not that year. That year, with no place else to go, I was one of the handful of people who stayed behind and finished out the season at the restaurant. (more…)
Friday and Saturday nights were always utter hell behind the bar. One of the local bands—drum kit, two guitars, vocalist, maybe a horn of some kind—would set up in the corner of the bar and play. Every band played the same thing: covers of oldies (Beatles, Chuck Berry) mixed with covers of more contemporary stuff (The Steve Miller Band, Bryan Adams). The bands played their fast songs to get people dancing, and most importantly, drinking. But they’d also pepper their setlists with slow songs, so that the horny, old drunks could pair off and sway together, enjoying their sloppy, public…
I moved home after college, slept for a week straight, then returned to my summertime place of employment—a Roaring Twenties-themed restaurant called Yesterday’s Royal. I’d started out there four years ago as a lowly dishwasher, but had worked my way up through the ranks in subsequent summers from kitchen expeditor to ice cream-scooper in the old-time ice cream parlor to I.D. checker/doorman at the front door on Friday and Saturday nights, until finally getting promoted to work behind the bar itself. While my fellow graduates were busy joining the Peace Corps or jockeying for internships with Lehman Brothers in Manhattan,…
After the Turtle! debacle, I gave up on gaming altogether for awhile. I went to college—Hamilton College, in Upstate New York—put on 50 pounds of muscle, and played Division III football for three years, until my knees finally gave out on me early in my junior year. I remember the five long days that I spent in a tiny, rural hospital my junior year while healing from ligament reconstruction surgery. At night, I’d read Whitley Strieber novels while glancing occasionally at the room’s window, worrying that an almond-eyed “gray” was out there in the woods at that very moment, waiting for me…
