I found out when I was in 3rd grade, my 14 year old sister Niamh found out when she was in 4th grade. Our parents lie to us for our whole lives about it, until we either find out or are told.
...Santa.
Every year we try to sleep in for as long as possible until little Aoife runs into our rooms and shakes us awake. This year she woke us up at 7:30 am, yelling and jumping up and down that Santa had come!
We walk out to the living room with sleep still in our eyes to see the Santa presents wrapped in special gift wrap and placed in individual piles for each of us. Aoife rushed through opening her presents and didn't even read the note Santa had left... classic 10 year old.
So the whole presents thing happened and was over. 3 days later...Aoife goes up to the attic. (nobody ever goes up to the attic...except apparently Santa.) She came down to my mom and showed her Santa's wrapping paper she had found in the attic. She asked my mom why we have Santa's paper in our attic.
She was crying, and mom said that Santa just left it here.
"Are you sure?" Aoife said, still crying, and my mom felt very bad as she answered yes.
Eventually, my mom had to go up and tell Aoife the truth. There was a lot of tears and screaming and hugging.
My mom told us that she felt the worst about telling Aoife about Santa...clearly we can see who the favorite child is.
Now we're all waiting for her to find out about the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny...
I really enjoyed reading your blog post about Aoife because its rare that kids still believe in Santa (the ones I know anyway) so it was nice to hear how much she believed in him. Although I was very sad she had to find out that he didn't exist this way. Hopefully she'll still believe in the tooth fairy and the easter bunny.
ReplyDelete