You're such a good kid, Nellie Oleson

Life was simple once.

I’m not pining for Neanderthal simple or Little House on the Prairie simple, I’m just wishing life’s simple things could be like they were before Thanksgiving.

At 7:30 Post Meridian, on the day we gather with family and roasted turkey and five kinds of potatoes to give thanks for everything we have in our lives that we take for granted during the rest of the year, my children marched up to me with some rumpled papers in their hands.

"Can you send this to Santa?" my 10-year-old asked as he thrust in my direction a torn sheet of notebook paper with a seemingly meager list. 

My eyes got all misty as I smoothed the food-stained page and the realization that this is perhaps the very last time in his wonder-believing life he will perform this ritual took full effect.

His sister, in solidarity, produced a letter of her own and presented it with a wink. "And mine, too?"

Her missive was typed and doubled spaced, and contained a host of things that could only fit onto gift cards. Ostensibly, the slabs of plastic cash would be used for year-round shopping ... randomly spaced in the foreseeable future ... with friends... as I chauffeur silently ... and dotter along behind ... at an acceptable distance.

As I try to decipher the boy's misaligned letters scribbled after three consecutive numerical notations, I realize Santa is doomed.

Number one: There is no way The Big Guy is going to finance this kid's heart desire for “a super-fast gaming system with impressive video capture for streamlined YouTube uploading.”

Not when there’s at least three perfectly good gaming systems collecting dust under the television.

Number two: “A Cyclecar?” I had to Google this contraption, only to find out it is pretty much a lightweight bullet-shaped go kart that tools around on bicycle wheels propelled by the equivalent of a motorcycle engine. More than “some assembly required.”

The 1918s called. It wants its fad back.

Maybe Santa could spring for the leather aviator goggles that should accompany such a vehicle, but the kid would have to drive around in the box they come it, making realistic vroom, vroom sounds on his own. Alas, he’s outgrown that stage.

Now it’s all about Snapchat, interactive video gaming, YouTube channels and ... hair gel?

Number three: “Enough hair gel to fill the swimming pool. Jell-O could be substituted.”

Poor Santa.

The internet and social media has certainly changed his job.

If I were him, I’d want to shift my kids onto the Naughty List and call it a day.

But I know he’s looking past my kids.I can feel his scowl. It sends icicles through my veins.

I can hear his normally jovial voice turn melancholy. “Now, who was it, I notice, who PAID their children to model for the family Christmas card?”

Guilty as charged.

In my defense, I felt the sum of a sawbuck worth the efforts of two camera-shy kids if only to lessen my own efforts in getting them to stand still and pose. I opened my mouth to speak.

No words came out.

I couldn’t bring myself to voice such logic. No matter how much I wish my children were the altruistic angels Hollywood has taught me children can be, realistically I’d rather employ than implode.

Appearances matter, especially as my daughter overhears me wrestling with my inner demons.

“You do realize we would have posed for photos without you paying us, right? We’re not complete brats.”

“I know. I know. You’re such a good kid, Nellie Oleson.”