Secret Santa

SECRET (NINJA) SANTA










“Ahhh!!!”

I hear a scream coming from the living room. As I race down the hall, pain-filled words follow the scream.

“I’m blind, I’m blind,” my ex-Marine husband exclaims. He faces my voice, his eyes squinted shut. He is holding a pair of night-vision goggles.

“What happened? “ I ask.

“I almost had him,” he responds.

“Had who?”

“Our Secret Santa! But the noise-sensitive flood lights came on and blinded me through the goggles.”

We’ve had a Secret Santa leaving presents the last couple of days. The gifts are accompanied by a poem coinciding with the twelve days of Christmas. Now my husband and I had both belonged to a military intelligence unit when we met. We now own and operate a martial arts studio. So, sometimes my husband forgets there is a regular world out there that does not require paranoid surveillance.

“Let’s see what he left,” I say walking to the front door.

“Yeah, I guess its okay,” my husband agrees. “He’s long gone by now.”

It’s five gold napkin rings. “Why is it so important to catch our benefactor?” I ask William, playing with the rings.

“I just hate the idea someone can get one on us.”

“What do you mean get one on us?’

“You know, sneak up on us. We are the sneaks.”

I shake my head, and the stakeout continues. Our Santa never comes at the same time, so it makes things difficult. William becomes obsessed and recruits our daughter into the operation. I come home from the studio to find black construction paper on all the windows facing the front of the house. Eyeholes are cut out and there are no lights on inside except for a red glowing chem. light.

“Where is Ciara?” I ask.

“Shhh, bedroom,” he whispers.

I go to our daughter’s bedroom. There she sits. On a chair. Facing the blackened window. Keeping lookout. Through peepholes.

Now it is my turn to yell, and when I let loose with an “Ahh,” my daughter starts and jumps up from the chair. My husband runs down the hall.

“Did you see something? What direction did they come from? Couldn’t you signal quietly?”

I answer in order.

“No. I don’t know. And I’M TIRED OF BEING QUIET!”

Our daughter returns to her post and softly says, “I think there’s something on the porch.”

My husband then gives me the look, the one that says “Thanks a lot” and really doesn’t mean it.

I privately think, he needs a hobby.

This time it is eleven “Lords a Leaping” ornaments. There’s one day left to catch the Ninja Santa.

This time William goes all out. He dresses in his Army cold weather, all white, gear. He climbs on the roof to settle in for the watch.

I’m sitting inside watching “White Christmas” on the tube when a loud war cry comes from out front, followed by an “oomph.”

I race to the front door to see the pursuit in progress. My husband is chasing a black-clad figure down a couple of yards. I pull on my boots to follow, to keep William in check. The Ninja-Santa jumps a neighbor’s fence, and their large but friendly dog tackles the culprit. William pulls the dog off the figure and hauls him to his feet. He removes the hood on the now very docile St. Ninjalas

It is a young 17-year-old from the Taekwondo school.

“Jeesh, Mr. Guy this Twelve Days of Christmas Secret Santa business has been a tradition of my family for years. But this had to be the hardest mission ever.”

William was grinning ear to ear. “Caught ya, didn’t I? Can’t get one over on me.”

I pat the young man on the back and say, “This was the best Christmas present you could have given him.”

But I hope next year our students just give us cookies.