Christmas in July

We had the most interesting encounter at the commissary on Tuesday and my kids are still asking about it. You see, we'd only made it about halfway through our list and had already taken a few "let me remind you about how we behave in public" moments. After one such conversation, I parked the cart out of the traffic-flow, told my little balls of energy to stand with it and absolutely, positively, not move while took five steps away from them to select the finest chicken tenders our commissary offers.

As I was perusing, a gentleman approached me and, in a quiet voice, said, "I know it's a little early, but come December I'm center court in the Sumter mall," as he stroked his white beard and chuckled. I smiled, said, "yeah, I can see how that works for you!" He gave me a jolly laugh then headed toward produce. My kids, who were actually staying with the cart just out of earshot saw the whole thing. So I took advantage of the situation and asked them if they'd seen that man talk to me. It turns out they had. So I did what anyone would and said, "did you realize that was Santa?!" Their little eyes got big and their heads were on swivels looking to see where he'd gone.

Wyatt was first to come to reality and ask why Santa was at the commissary. Again, I did what any mom who really needs some cooperation would do and said, "he's on a secret scouting trip and told me he's watching all the kids here today. Then he told me he'll be back in December. Isn't that amazing?" Natalie was in, whole-hog. Wyatt flat-out asked if he was real. So I just answered his question with a question and said, "didn't he look real?" It helped that we only caught one more glance of him before he disappeared - he was just elusive enough to make it seem like he was spying.

Natalie asked about him again this morning; Wyatt still seems to be slightly unconvinced but is teetering at the age where he will not dare to fully disbelieve, just in case the guy in shorts and a t-shirt really was Santa himself. And who knows? Maybe it was, and he was there to remind me, too.