When I was nine, I still believed in Santa Claus.

I started first grade when I was five. Then, in the middle of the year, my family moved to a small town in South Carolina. Starting first grade had been hard enough but moving in the middle of it was harder. 

Anyway, they were innocent years. In small towns, kids didn’t mature as fast as they did in big cities.  But four years later, in the middle of the school year, (again) we moved back home.  Home, but not home. Children forget and the few friends I’d played with before I left didn’t remember me and I wasn’t in their “group.”

My first day in the fourth grade was a few weeks before they let out for Christmas. I was an outsider in the midst of a class of established friends. Mrs. Boyd (I will never forget her name) read a Christmas story about a young boy who found out there was no Santa Claus.  Apparently, my non-poker face registered shocked disbelief and I must’ve drawn in my breath or something because the kids around me stared and then started laughing. One girl said, “She still believes in Santa Claus!” And the whole class had a grand old time at my expense before Mrs. Boyd (chuckling, herself) made them stop.

I was mortified, sad and angry. In those days, children didn’t question their parents’ reasons for doing or not doing things. When I burst into tears and told Mom what happened, she said something to the effect that just because they didn’t believe, didn’t mean there was no Santa.

Belief shattered, I said, no, there was no Santa, and as I said it, it dawned on me that it meant there probably was no Easter bunny either, and the floodgates opened again. Well, it was a sad day. But when Mom asked me to help with my little sister’s Santa things – in the middle of the night, no less – we-ell, that meant I had a big secret. That put me in the cat-bird seat. However, that was also the end of tooth fairies, leprechauns, wishing on shooting stars, (and believing you’d get your wish), etc, etc. Fun stuff.

It was tough, letting go of beliefs like that. I was the youngest in my class all through school and it took me a long time to grow up. In fact, even at my ripe old age, I don’t know that I ever did. (My favorite movie character of all time is the horse in Disney’s Tangled.)