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The Little Elf

I grew up with two brothers who were older than me. Quinton, who turned eleven six days after I was born, and Terry who was eight. Quinton was 17 and a Senior in high school when I was six years old and in the first grade. He was old enough to help Daddy at the store and he had a girlfriend, so I was always closer to Terry. Although Terry was 14 and a Freshman, we played together, but mostly I think he just loved to torture me!
When I was six, we lived in the white house across the field from the Norma Baptist Church. The house had a high front porch and more than a dozen steps. The front door had three horizontal windows and a pretty glass door knob with brass hardware and a skeleton key hole underneath. At Christmastime, the porch eaves were outlined with a strand of multicolored C-7 lights
I can remember learning to read. My first grade teacher, Miss Reeda, would place us in groups and line our kiddie chairs in a half circle behind her desk directly in front of the chalk board. We would take turns reading from a first grade paper back reader, “See Jack throw the ball” and “Run, Tip run!” I was so proud that I had learned to read!
Now-a-days there is a manufactured figment of someone’s imagination who is taking children’s Christmases by storm. He is about the size of a Barbie doll. He watches children and enjoys getting into all sorts of mischievous situations while keeping Santa informed of the child’s behavior during the month leading up to the big holiday. This imaginary, manufactured little creature is known as the Elf on the Shelf. Well, in 1966, I had my very own real elf, and he watched me thru the living room window!
It was around the first of December and Miss Reeda had allowed me to bring my little paper back reader home so that I could read to Momma and Daddy. I was so excited! We sat down that evening on the living room sofa, Momma on one side of me, Daddy on the other; we were facing the front door, which had a window half way down. I was reading when all of a sudden, through the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a pointy green hat, slowly rising above the bottom of the door window! The hat disappeared back to the bottom as quickly as it had appeared! I looked at Momma, taking an excited, quick breath and pointing to the window. Momma told me that Santa’s elves were watching me to make sure I was behaving, she smiled and told me to finish reading my story. I began reading again, then I caught another glimpse of the hat! I stopped reading and looked up. The hat quickly raised above the bottom of the window, eventually exposing two beady little eyes that peeked straight at me! ….and then the eyes and hat quickly disappeared back to the bottom.
This continued throughout the weeks leading up to Christmas. I would be playing around, not wanting to eat supper or go to bed as I was told. I would walk through the living room to suddenly see the little elf peeking through the window. I would quickly straighten my act up. I never saw him much when I was being good, only when I was not minding and acting out of line. Finally, I got smart and asked Momma if the elf was really Terry just trying to fool me. She would never admit that it was. I would watch for the little elf finally getting up enough nerve to run out the door onto the porch to try to catch him. Needless to say, I never did. He would run down the steps so fast and behind the house where it was dark. I would only run as far as the Christmas lights would illuminate my way. I quickly got scared and ran back up the steps and onto the porch where I would yell for Terry to come out and reveal himsELF to me!
In all these years, neither Terry nor Momma have ever told me the truth about the elf. He still says that I was so mean that Santa sent elves all the way from the North Pole to watch me!

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 1 Corinthians 13:11 (KJV)