I consider myself a logical person. That isn't to say I'm not emotional. I can get angry pretty quickly. Once I calm down though, I can usually reason through the situation and take responsibility if necessary.
Joseph doesn't remember much about his childhood. I find this very strange. I have random memories that I will just occasionally think about. Sometimes they're important, but usually it's just mundane and random.
I remember when I would get out of my half day of kindergarten, my Mom would let me watch Nickelodeon. She taught me how to use the remote to record my favorite shows on a blank VHS tape, and how to pause it to cut out the commercials. This was a glorious time for me. Growing up as the fifth of nine children, having the TV all to myself was a rather special treat. I fondly remember watching Ureka's Castle, David the Gnome, and my all time favorite Noozles.
There was one show that I can't remember the name. It was just ok. It was a man (he may have had a beard) who had this secret "hideout" area in the woods. He would "hike" to get there and then do I don't remember what. Maybe played a guitar a bit. I have a vivid memory of one particular episode. He found a "friend" who lived on a different planet. This friend was a stuffed toy. It bothered me that he was talking to this stuffed toy like it was a person. And the story only got worse. Apparently this friend/stuffed toy got here because his planet was so hot, he "fell off." He made it his quest to send the "friend" back to his planet with some water.
I continued to watch, thinking he would gather barrels and barrels full of water. Nope. After he was done with the toy-man, he said a tearful good-bye, and then wiped the tear from his eye and put it in a plastic box. And gave the tear to the toy-man. And bid him on his way.
I reflected back on this frequently as a child because there was so much wrong with this story. I don't remember knowing much about space travel in kindergarten, but I remember thinking this was a ridiculous story. The toy-man fell off his planet? Even at that age, I knew that people didn't fall off my planet. How can you live on a planet that is so hot you would fall off? Why would you send someone back to a planet that hot? WHY WOULD YOU SEND HIM BACK WITH A TEAR? This nagged me. It also plagued me that he never explained how the toy man would get back to his planet. He had no space ship. This planet wasn't hot enough to cause him to "fall." I stopped watching the show after that. The bearded man had lost the trust of this young child.
It is for this reason that Santa Claus haunted me as a child. Growing up in Phoenix, we had neither snow nor a chimney. Flying reindeer did not make sense to me. I would sit in the car and reflect on the number of houses, the effort and time that would go into providing and transporting toys for children, and wonder how it could be done. If it was "magic," why hadn't I seen it? How does one acquire magic? Why are there multiple Santa Clauses in malls throughout the world?
This is not to say that I didn't have an imagination as a child. My stories just made sense. This also isn't to say that I'm the type of person that has to see things to believe them. I know there are many things in this world that can't be explained. But they're not crazy reindeer-flying, falling off hot planets, ridiculous situations. We just haven't figured out the entire logic of the world.
A world that does not include toy-men from hot planets or Santa.
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