When I was Santa's Elf

[jackfaire]

Picture of my daughter's first visit with Santa she looks eerily quiet. A second after the flash of the camera she was screaming her head off.

[Flying Grype]

Aw, I was Santa's Helper once. I loved it. The Santa thing was run by that photo store named after the complete absence of colour, so I was effectively working for them for two months.

Our Santa was a nice guy who was not quite fat enough to be Santa but his real beard made up for that. The manager was a good guy to work with too. My job was mainly taking orders and payment, and finding people's pictures when they came to pick them up. Occasionally I had to wrangle the lineup of kids.

Oddly enough I don't remember there being any really shrieky or scared kids, or any overbearing pushy parents. I think someone did show up with a cranky toddler once and decided to come back later instead of taking his picture when he was in this mood.

There were only two bad things that I can remember:

1) There was a little coin-operated ride down the mall that was shaped like a flying carpet with a big blue genie on it, and it played an annoying little pseudo-Middle-Eastern tune that was less complex than the soundtrack to an 8-bit video game. I can still hum it, eleven years later.

2) One time a guy with his face and eyeball all bloodied was strolling through the mall and security chased after him. I missed it. My manager saw it. Never did find out what the guy had done to himself.

[Lace Neil Singer]

A mate of mine has an even guiltier secret than mine; when he went to see Santa as a little kid... he peed on Santa. XD Compared to that, my pulling off of Santa's beard is tame. XD