Telling The Tale

There's no other way to tell the story.

Well, actually, there are probably more. 

Like the popular Paul Simon song of a few years back, 'There Must Be 50 Ways To Leave Your Lover'.  If you set your mind to it, you can always find more then one way to do just about anything.

But let's not get distracted from the objective here.  You want to learn what really happened on Tulu Drive on Christmas Eve.  To decide if we're guilty of terrorizing the neighborhood.

No Detective, I wasn't trying to follow any of Mr. Simon's advice.

Now, if you're going to keep interrupting me, we'll never get through the story of what happened that night.

See there you go again.  No, no, I don't mean that what I'm going to tell you is made up fiction.  Story just means the account of what happened on that evening.

You never heard of Tulu Drive.  Gee, the developer isn't going to be happy about that.  It's the first street in a new development to the North of Pine Street, which is to the North of Maple.

Now to start at the beginning...  what?

No, I'm not going to tell you my life's story.  Yes, I can stick to the facts.  Can I continue?

OK.

Robert and I had moved in for the holidays, and had some house guests.  We also invited the neighbors from both sides of us to a Christmas Eve party.  We didn't know them well, but it's fun to have a group together to enjoy good food, plenty of eggnog, and ...

Well of course, the eggnog had a 'kick' to it, to use your term.  What kind of question is that anyway?  'Kick?'  I'll haven't heard that question asked that way since my graduation dance from high school, and old Principal Walters wanted to know if the punch was spiked.

Answer the question?  What question?

Oh yeah.  Gosling's dark or Bacardi light, your choice.

No, I didn't mean that you could have a choice now.  The guests had a choice that night.

Well, all right.  Now where were we.

That's right, the party.  There were 18 people at the start.  What do you mean how come so many?

Oh I see.  Well Detective, they did all come from just three houses, but the houses on Tulu are somewhat large, and everyone had guests for the holidays.

Can I continue now?  Well, thank you Detective.

Just past midnight, we heard noise from the roof.  Someone joked about a clatter, and going out to check what was the matter.

Oh come on Detective.  Clement Moore's 'The Night Before Christmas'.

Yes, that clatter.  In any event, before we did anything, the noise starts coming down the chimney.  Thankfully it's so warm here that no one ever uses the fireplace, so Santa was able to crash down on the hearth, and roll out into the room.

Why would Santa stop at our place you ask?  Well, don't you think we were asking the same thing?

Santa had finished his appointed rounds, and just wanted some Christmas spirits for himself.  Turns out he liked to alternate between the dark and the light.  Turns out he liked to alternate a lot.

We didn't want him to drive, or fly as the case may be, in the condition he was in by 3:00 AM.  We offered him a bedroom, which he agreed was a good idea, but he was really worried about the reindeer.  We told him not to worry.

We were the ones that should have been worried.  They were starving, and very unhappy, after being left on the roof for three hours.

How did we know?  How did we know?  Check out these teeth marks on my arm.  Does that look like they were happy?

Their being hungry is where terrorizing the neighborhood comes in.  Did you know that reindeer consider flowering shrubs as delicacies?

Detective!  That's insulting.  To think that with more time we could have come up with a better story.  How dare you!

There's no other way to tell the story.