bad santa? bad parents
No doubt my lovely wife will be posting the "happy" picture of L with Santa, who came to her company party. Santa looks like a really good Santa, except the company logo behind him makes him look like a real shill. "I can give you whatever you want, kid, as long as it's a PVR with an unlimited contract!"
Of course I throw all this bile out there to begin with, because when God was handing out parent badges, He saved a couple for the idjits in the back, namely us. See, while we were in MA visiting inlaws over Thanksgiving, we took L to the local extreme tourist trap-slash-town institution that has COUNTRY CHARM farting out its wazoo. The theory in taking him in the midst of this bad craziness was that he'd get his first trip to see Santa. And see Santa he did, after we got an ornament with his name on it, watched his dull reaction to the extremely creepy animatronic bluegrass musicians, and ate squares of fudge.
See, I knew in advance that he would not appreciate St. Nick at all -- in fact, being held by a large bearded fat man, dressed in red, jangling things in his face and possibly smelling of booze, would probably be up there on the list of Extremely Scary Things if you're going on 1. But we wanted pictures regardless, possibly to put on holiday cards, possibly to send to a site like this one, where classic, hilarious images of child terror have been captured for posterity.
But what I ended up with was a screaming infant, a raised eyebrow from Santa and a possible call to CPS. My partner in crime didn't help things much by saying as L was shrieking his little head off: "didja get the picture? didja get the picture?" Not really funny so much as creepy for everyone involved. At least L won't remember a thing. We hope.
I'm really not proud at all. But here it is: enjoy.
Sigh. I owe the little guy a nice big toy, courtesy of the extremely scary fat man who will break into our house.