As a small child I was told all the same things at Christmas the rest of you were. Be good. Santa KNOWS if you are being bad. Santa has spies everywhere. Okay maybe you weren't told that Santa had spies everywhere. Obviously your older brothers were not as creative as mine.
My big brother Stephen also gleefully introduced me to the story of Black Peter who scared the livin' life right out of me. Actually I am going to digress on this one for a moment. There are two things I want to say here. The first is that there is no way that my brother knew that my deepest (imaginary) terror was "The Black and White Man" (This is something I will definitely come back to) and that his scary depiction of Black Peter only added fuel to that fire. Second of all I want to say that as an adult looking at Black Peter, the not even remotely subtle racial overtones gives me the shivers. However as a child I was not told he was a black man, African American, African anything, I was told he was a devil. My brother was not being a racist.
Anyway.... even more bizarre was the "relationship" I developed with Santa's elves. They didn't scare me per se, but I truly believed them to be watching from any and every where. I wasn't sure if they had invisiblity powers but that seemed to make the most sense. This had two major impacts on my young life. The first was that I got VERY good at changing my clothes while showing the absolute minimal amount of flesh. Second of all from approximately Remembrance Day to Christmas Eve my life became the Truman Show. Every window was treated like a reverse TV screen. There were secret invisible elves everywhere so I had to give them my best show. Of course I would forget sometimes and behave like the beastly little child I was. I fought with my brothers, had tantrums and kept a messy room. But as soon as I remembered or was reminded about the eyes/spies who were watching me.. BAM I was on; ever the little Starlette making my bed with a flair and fervour that was shocking.... or nauseating.
The real problem of course is that this is a habit (?) / behaviour has stayed with me all my life. Not all the time of course but once and a while the feeling creeps up on me and I am on. Almost exclusively when I am all by myself and at night, then I am surrounded by unseen cameras and I have to be the best me I can be. It is weird but not altogether unpleasant. I feel a little like a cross between a mentally deficient Martha Stewart and Ellen ('cause I dance) but all in all I am not sure if it is the healthiest way for me to live my life. I think it also contributes to my fear that an axe murderer is lurking in the bushes waiting for me to be home alone. Damn my over active imagination and damn those pointy eared spies
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