Santa Claus is Coming .... to Scribbletown
It�s beginning to look a lot like a winter solstice holiday down in Scribbletown. The babies and toddlers are stringing lights on the trees and bushes. Some lights flash �bad baby� and �good baby� at intervals. Other strings of lights are sort of magical. When the babies touch them, a big fist appears with a big lit-up �Ka-Pow!� in the sky. The babies like this the best and there are �Ka-Pow�s flashing all day and night until the Bad Mommies put a stop to it, which they are rarely able to do.
Of course, the Bad Mommies can only get so far with this kind of behavior because if they step over the line, they are put in rooms full of two year olds screaming �Mine! Mine!� who fight over advertising circulars and bottle tops and other toys they had no interest in until somebody else picks them up.
Scribbletown has its own Santa. The regular one won�t visit these reprobates. The Scribbletown Santa brings the residents anything they want as long as it�s something destructive like sticks and rocks and things that can be destroyed. Scribbletonians like to create mayhem.
During all important holidays, the menu never changes. All Scribbletonians are vegetarians, mainly because the only creatures they are kind to are the animals that lurk at the edges of the forest and the toddlers wouldn�t dream of killing them even if they were capable of preparing meat. Plus, the babies don�t have teeth so meat just isn�t what�s for dinner. They do not eat anything special; they like to eat the same foods day in and day out and if they are offered something unusual like mashed potatoes or fresh steamed green beans in a vinaigrette sauce, they are likely to just say, �Ewww!� and throw it across the table, hitting another toddler in the face and causing it to scream. And then chaos ensues.
The Bad Mommies have to clean up this mess so they don�t often introduce anything beyond the normal, acceptable foods, which include things like yogurt, applesauce, blueberries, black olives (which fit nicely over their fingers), rice, crackers, shredded cheese (absolutely MUST be shredded), beans, corn, soy nuggets, garden burgers (without the colored bits in them), cake, pie crust (but not the filling), raw green beans and sweet potato chunks, dollops of ketchup (not to eat � just to smear around the plate for the hell of it), and the like.
The Scribbletonians also enjoy dancing like whirling dervishes, spinning for hours if left to their own mysterious devices. They demand that the Bad Mommies place a vinyl record on the record player (no more recent technology is available to them and they prefer records because sometimes their antics cause the records to skip which sends them into paroxysms of laughter) and be available to turn the record over when side A ends.
After all the festivities, the babies and toddlers collapse into a heap and the Bad Mommies scoop them up and place them in their nests to sleep. The Mommies are not allowed to leave until every last Scribbletonian is fast, fast asleep and in no danger of suddenly waking up to the sound of Bad Mommy shoes crunching on dried fallen leaves. The Mommies will sometimes team up and spread pine needles on their usual paths to avoid making a sound as they slink off to bed but there is usually one baby with very good hearing who will let out a screetch and have to be rocked and sung to for three hours until it finally succumbs.
A Very Merry Scribbletown Winter Soltice to you!
