SANTA
The other day my young son asked, “Daddy, how does Santa go all over the world, to every single house, all in one night?”
Thinking quickly, I replied, “Well, Santa has a special talent. He can stop time. So even though it seems like only one night to us, it actually takes him quite a while…years, in fact, to deliver all the presents to every single house. But when he’s done and starts time again, only one second of our time has passed.”
My son then replied, “But doesn’t he get really old then? I mean, if every year of our time he ages a bunch of years in his time?”
Proud of my genius, I replied boldly, “Nope. Because when he stops time, he also stops aging.”
My little boy thought about this for a moment, then said, “What if he has an accident while delivering presents? And maybe he even dies. Will time be stopped for all eternity?”
A little flustered, I said curtly, “No, that will never happen. Because Santa’s immortal, he can never die.”
My boy, undaunted, then asked, “But let’s just say, hypothetically, that Santa is lying dead, right now, and has been dead for thousands of years. And time has been halted, which means our planet has stopped spinning and all of the orbiting planets in all the universe and all of the great galactic explosions of stars and the continuous growth of the universe’s black holes have also completely stopped, possibly causing a cataclysmic end to all matter as we know it; and that what we now think of as consciousness – for example the conversation we are having this very moment – is nothing but an energy-based transference of past mental and emotional impressions now being created in what is most likely an evolutionary reduction back to the primordial fluid from which we all were created in the first place?”
I thought for a second. “What grade are you in, again?”
“Fifth,” he responded.
“Yeah,” I said, seeing a coffee shop. “Santa’s fake, dude.”