The Tongue

I received a letter in the mail today. It had no return address, but the note said this:

("Cassie: I won't give you Santa back until you give me one million cookies. Lemon & ginger. The tongue is proof that he's still alive. -Santa Napper")

Enclosed was a tongue.
The Santa Tongue.


So here's the story. I attended a Christian Academy my senior year, along with my friend A. We both lived in the dorm, along with a mutual friend AL, who was A's roommate.

It was near Christmas time, and the dorm was aglow with festivities. One thing I quickly found out (being new to academy life) was that, on a particular night, the senior girls would stay up all night to decorate the dorm with appropriately-themed doodads. Well... that's not all we did.

The decorating lasted until the wee hours of the night, but after that came the pranks. We dashed, crept, giggled, and slithered our way around the dorm halls, tying the peacefully slumbering occupant's doors together with anything we could find- rope, string, pantyhose, etc. Then, we raised a ruckus that would raise the dead (it was almost like trying to!) to summon the heretofore snoozing girls to a donut and hot chocolate feast in the kitchen. They tried to come out, bless their little hearts... and we had mercy on them (after a while).

Well, after all that excitement simmered down, A, AL and I realized that we really only had a few more hours until we had to get ready for classes. What was the point of going to bed? We might as well stay up... And that's where Santa came in.

For some unknown reason that is lost in the chronicles of time, the dorm storage room had a dancing Santa tucked away, and it had become a dorm tradition that Santa would hide in various odd places throughout the holiday season. (No doubt to increase Christmas spirit.)

This is what Santa looked like... except he had no legs. Seriously.

And it wasn't enough to just hide Santa in strategically frightening locations. Somehow, before the night was over, we had 3 or 4 movies about The Attack of the Santa. They are hilarious, I assure you!

But the tongue! What of the tongue?!

We thought the Santa was pretty gross. To emphasize his grossness and creepiness, he needed... something. Then A (or AL- they were roommates) remembered AL's sparkly, Christmas-bulb decorations! The bulb was fetched, and Santa sprouted a tongue.

I haven't seen those videos in years, but the memory of that night's fun has lived on... especially when I opened an innocent letter... and found Santa's tongue.

(Some of the places we hid Santa, by the way, include (but are not limited to) the bathroom stall, the shower stall, my roommate's closet, the kitchen, etc. You should have heard the shrieks of terror! It was glorious.)