The Christmas Con Artist

Christmas was fantastic this year. The children were excited Christmas morning to find that Santa had indeed looked over this past years mishaps and delivered on most of the things they asked for and hyper with expectation for the day ahead where more family would gather to shower them with love and even more gifts. The house smelling of great food, Christmas carols in the background…all of the things you would see in a Hallmark movies.

But there was the night before.

Oh sure, it seemed like a good enough idea to go to Christmas Eve mass with one of my best friends, Traci, her husband Michael, and their three sons. The oldest is 13 and now taller than me. I’ve known him since he was two and it’s a bit freaky to have to reach up to kiss his still chubby cheek. The middle, my Godson, is the lifelong BFF to Mr. C. Their youngest, Mr. D, is the same age as my Miss G and Traci and I have for the longest time joked about the day they go to prom together…and if we have our way, the day they get married. If there is still such a thing as arranged marriage, Traci and I are all for it because aside from the fact that our beautiful babies would…well, make beautiful babies, it would give us a chance to hang out forever and we are both in favor of that.

Look at how cute they were together last Christmas….

So like I said, we all headed out to church and it started out really well. It was a children’s mass and it was not quiet at all which I took as a sign of good fortune since my two cannot shut their mouths for five minutes to save their lives. We all took out seats and everyone was really well behaved. I was so proud.

That didn’t last long.

Now I should explain here that as far as Catholics go, I may not be the best ever. We don’t go to mass every week…or every month for that matter. I try, but the older they get the more life gets in the way. So it is safe to say that perhaps…PERHAPS…my children are not the best behaved in church.

We all sat down and Mr. C and my Godson immediately got into a rather lengthy discussion of the different type of evolved Pokemon and God knows what else and I had to remind them several times to keep their conversation down.

As usual, I should have been keeping an eye on Miss G because while I was busy with the boys, she was honing her talent as a pick up artist. At first it started with a simple love note to Mr. D passed to him by her Aunt Traci. Simple and sweet.

I Love You Mr. D

Mr. D took one look at it and handed it back at his Mom before it had a chance to give him cooties. My daughter is not one to take no for an answer so she took the note back, added a few lines and passed it back again.

I Love You Mr. D
XOXOXOXOXOXOXO
XOXOXOXOXOXOXO
XOXOXOXOXOXOXO
XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Mr. D, convinced she had actually now infected him with nasty girl cooties, looked at it again and his eyes got super wide…and he threw it back to his Mom as his face turned beet red.

Now you would think this would put my Miss G off, but no. Girlfriend got into her wallet and dug out a five dollar bill, folded it up, and gave it to her Aunt Traci in an effort to buy Mr. D for cash money. Traci told her that was a lot of money and she really didn’t need to do that, you know because that would be human trafficking and all. Miss G was not going to be deterred though and said, “That’s okay Aunt Traci, I have lots of money!” Sure enough, she did. We looked in her purse and discovered she had emptied her entire life savings out of her piggy bank and brought it to church. Hey, a girl has to be prepared. Traci and I struggled to maintain ourselves and act like adults in church but the giggles got the best of us. Between Mr. D looking anywhere and everywhere to avoid contact with Miss G, and Miss G doing everything in her power to get his attention, and failing that, PURCHASE him, it was all too much.

You would think it would have ended there, but no. Halfway through mass, Miss G always realizes she is one of the only ones who won’t be receiving Communion because she isn’t old enough yet. This is the portion of the program where she starts talking about how HUNGRY she is…STARVING really, like we haven’t fed her in weeks. Constant angling to get me to agree to let her have that piece of bread the rest of the Catholic word calls a host. She is dying to know what it tastes like and it just infuriates her that I won’t let her.

So when she started that portion of the programming at Christmas mass, I spent some time talking to her about how special her First Communion would be and how in the meantime she could walk up to the priest like the rest of us, she just had to cross her hands over her chest to show she wasn’t receiving Communion but would like to receive a special Christmas blessing. Miss G agreed to that…better to meet in the middle than to get left out of all the fun, right?

Wrong.

So we got in line, Miss G, then Mr. C, then my Godson, then me. I was busy making sure the boys knew what they were doing and trying to keep them from talking and I took my eyes off Miss G for what I swear was no more than thirty seconds. When I looked up again, Miss G had made it past the priest and was looking back at me with a look somewhere between shock and victory. Then I saw it. She had conned the priest into giving her Communion, had the host in her hands and was scooting away with it as fast as she could.

I morphed into super slow motion, shoving the boys aside, hissing “NOOOOOOO MISSSSSS GEEEEEEEEEE…..!!!!!” while leaping over pews and praying church goers. Okay, I made that part about leaping over pews and people up but you get the general picture, right? I got the host out of her hand and then stood there as approximately 137 people stared at me with their mouths open. And no, I’m not exaggerating.

For those of you that aren’t Catholic, I know this sounds like it’s not that big of a deal. And in the grand scheme of things, it really isn’t. However, First Communion is supposed to happen in second grade and it’s cool for two very specific reasons if you are a girl. First there is the frilly, white dress and veil you get to wear. Secondly, you finally get to find out what the bread everyone else has been eating tastes like. (Guess what? It tastes like bread.) Those two things alone are the most you are going to get out of it because at seven, it’s really very difficult to absorb all the gory details about how the whole thing came about in the first place.

Also, there are all sorts of rules about what to do with the host should it end up somewhere it wasn’t originally intended and I flashed back to Catholic school where the nuns used to scare the holy hell out of us on that very topic. I remembered that you are supposed to return the host to the priest, tell him where you found it, etc but not wanting to a.) cause further commotion or b.) roll over on my own daughter, I did what seemed like the most logical thing and stuck it in my mouth, grabbed Miss G and ran like hell leaving Mr. C and my Godson behind with their mouths hanging open.

This was the straw that broke the camels back in terms of any of us trying to behave the rest of Mass and we spent the remaining 20 minutes or so in fits of laughter.

So there you have it, a Christmas tale of how one adorable little girl became a con artist and took her first stab at human trafficking. Come back next time and we can talk about her elaborate Ponzi scheme to garner the most bottle cap necklaces in all of first grade.