I dedicate this post to Santa’s Community Blog because I haven’t visited him in a long while and he certainly deserves something special! Merry Christmas to Santa and all my blogging buddies!

Like many little boys, I was not well behaved like my parents had hoped. My dad was hard core military and often made rules that I just didn’t agree with. Usually, I misbehaved in a rebellion against him.

When I was 4 years old, I was living in Texas on an army post in Fort Hood. One day while my mother was busy and my dad was at work, I walked down to the creek because there was an older kid I saw near it.

While there, we were looking at the water moccasins (a poisonous snake often found near or in fresh water). He told me, “It’s right there…it’s a big one.”

I still couldn’t see it but kept looking. I leaned over a bit further…lost my footing and fell in! I couldn’t swim and was scared fighting to stay afloat. The older boy pulled me out of the water, saving my life. My mother came storming down to the water, screaming at me.

She carried me on her shoulders all the way home, paddling my behind the as she walked. She was crying, knowing that I could be dead. She cried, “I love you!” spanking me more, “I’m going to shoot you if you EVER do that again!” Haha…she was mad and happy at the same time!

When I was six I had read many books on police investigations as my father had tons of instruction manuals for that type of thing. From those books, I learned how to pick several different types of locks. I was an inquisitive kid who loved reading anything I wasn’t supposed to.

We lived on an US military base in Frankfurt, Germany. Because I was naturally bad, I picked the lock (an old padlock) on my neighbor’s storage locker in the basement. I picked it everyday to make him mad. Eventually, there was a police investigation into the situation which heightened the stakes, making it very exciting for me!

They put a new lock on the cage to thwart any further break ins. This time, they used a more sturdy padlock, but it was no problem for me. I spent 3 weeks learning how to pick it and finally…I got in. I never stole anything, but loved playing cat and mouse.

The problem was that I showed off to my friends and they told on me! That Christmas I just knew Santa wasn’t going to bring me any presents. A few weeks prior to Christmas, my parents and little sister went on a train ride across Europe. Santa was on the train.

Santa is a little different in Germany than he is in many other countries, or maybe the people’s customs are different. On the train, Santa sat near two things which I will never forget. One was a big stack of Christmas stockings stuffed with candy and toys. The other were bundles of sticks wrapped in string (switches and ashes)!

I saw one young boy sit on Santa’s lap and Santa asked if he’d been bad or good. His father said, “He has been a bad, bad boy!”

Santa handed his father the switches. The father pulled the kid’s pants down and whipped him with them! The boy cried and cried, the father seemed to enjoy administering the whipping!

Back at home on Christmas eve…I was thinking that I had been so bad. I just knew there would be nothing but switches and ashes under the tree. I knew I would get whipped while my sister enjoyed tons of awesome presents!

I wouldn’t go to sleep Christmas eve and I kept getting up to see if St.Nick had come with my switches and ashes. Finally, my mom told me that the Santa on the train wasn’t the real Santa. Talk about relief! They waited until the last second to tell me (how mean of them). I soon feel asleep…smiling� :smile:

I remember waking up to the best Christmas ever! I got everything I wanted that year and was thankful that the REAL Santa had come to see me. I knew he was nice! I told my parents how sorry I was for opening the lock on my neighbor’s storage cage. My parents taught me a valuable lesson about lying and made sure I remembered how wrong it was to tamper with other people’s belongings.

It sure made getting those presents SO MUCH sweeter! It was definitely a Christmas I’ll never forget! :mrgreen: