Mall Santa

Disclaimer: This essay or rant or whatever you want to call it is in no way to be taken seriously. I do hope you do get something out of this though, whether it is a new person for your hit list or a new reason to commit suicide.

Ok…new rant time. This times target: Mall Santas. Now I know you are thinking; that I must be one messed up person to not like Santa, but at least hear me out. I just don’t understand why people would take their kid to the mall to see Santa. So, to begin lets break down the process of going to see the mall Santas:

1. You brave the Mall in the busiest possible time of the year. You drive around for hours looking for a parking space, and finally find one three blocks away. You then proceed to tromp through 7 feet snowdrifts dragging your kids after you. You then spend over 45 minutes trying to get from one end of the mall to the next. And you still haven’t gotten to the Mall Santa.

2. By the time you have gotten there, you are disheveled and your kids look like something your ex-spouse had drug in. You look to see the line has grown preposterous and now stretches to somewhere in Southeast Asia. You drag your now screaming and crying child into line with the rest of the screaming crying children.

3. Ok. You are now in line. You wait…and wait…and wait…and watch the parent in front of you beat their child into a coma for crying…and wait…and wait. Finally it is your time.

4. You look over at the Santa. His suit looks like it hasn’t been washed since the Reagan Administration. The guy looks confused and quite possibly doped up, and you realize that there is no screening policy for the Santa that they use. Any homeless guy, pimp, crack dealer, or Ball State graduate could work as a mall Santa. So you tell your child to sit on this stranger’s lap. (I must note at this time that most parents tell their kids that they shouldn’t talk to strangers, but it is ok to sit on their lap if they are wearing a red suit. No wonder Psych bills are so high today.)

5. So your child is now sitting the possible psychopaths lap. The cameraman (who looks like a gay elf) is trying to take the picture. Your child has commenced screaming at the top of his lungs (just like all the previous kids) because he is sitting on the lap of a man who smells faintly of urine. You nicely tell your kid to be quite, then to shut up, then to shut the Heck up, and finally you just knock the kid out with a swift slap to the side of the head. The gay elf and the other parents smile patiently at you as your unconscious kid gets his picture taken.

6. After it is all finished you pick up the limp body of your kid and proceed to pay the amount equal to a small country’s GDP for a small blurry 8 by 10 Polaroid picture. You sweetly clutch the already wrinkled picture and proceed to kick and claw your way back to the car for the long crying filled ride home. And you wonder why I don’t like Mall Santas.

This has been another rant by the indefatigable ShinKarasu!