A Short Short Tale of the Santa Sucker

Cousin Billy was a pretty cool dude, you know, in the way that everybody liked him, even the adults. We didn’t see him but once a year and when he was around we made the most of it. My sisters and I had it kind of, well, great… spoiled rotten we were, at least according to grandma, but mom liked doing things for us and we sure liked being on the receiving end.

Still, when Billy came to visit, our lives got kicked up a notch, in energy, in excitement and dare devilishness. Like, he had an old MGB that he arrived in, convertible but the top was either missing or didn’t work because we always had to ride with the top down regardless of the weather, you just had to dress for the occasion. Once, rolling down the mountain at about 60 mph the engine cut out. Billy grabbed the biggest screwdriver I have ever seen while we were still rolling along, turned around and whacked the fuel pump a bunch of times until the engine roared back to life and we were on our way again, Billy laughing his ass off. Yet there was one thing about Billy the always kind of pissed me off. Every time after his visits, I would inevitably find something missing a few days or weeks later. Never anything too significant, and I asked him about it once but he never gave me an answer. I suppose he wanted something of mine to remember the visit or maybe he was just a fucking kleptomaniac. Anyway last year, speaking of being spoiled rotten, mom got us each one of those Santa suckers that I always liked. Not one of those ones that were just some red hard candy poured into a mold that had been used for so many years that you could barely tell what it was supposed to be. This was a really cool one with a face and a white hair and beard done with all different colored candies. Not really cool by any objective standard but yea, cool. By then, it was pure nostalgia because I was far too old to be attached to a freaking sucker and yet, I was… attached. So after Billy left, the damn sucker was missing. My sisters had theirs, but mine was nowhere to be found and I was certain that bastard took it with him. Of course the next time I saw him, he denied it like he always does. I hope the asshole enjoyed it!