Nerd Pride Radio

Jacksfilms does a daily YouTube feature called YIAY (Yesterday I Asked You...) Each day he gives the funniest answers from the previous day and then asks a new question.

A couple of the most recent ones make good conversation starters though, so I'll ask them seriously.

First up: for those of you raised in the Santa tradition, how/When Did you learn that Santa wasn't real?

For me, an old rambley teacher told our entire class when I was 8.

I was in 1st or 2nd grade and the older kids on the bus told me.

I was dedicated to a scientific style investigation of the issue, which included stakeouts, successful ones.

It wasn't traumatic enough for me to recall. But I had 3 older sisters, a couple of whom loved to be mean to me, so I suspect one of them probably told me. That, or finding a particular, unwrapped present under my parents' bed, only to have it appear under the tree as a wrapped present being from Santa.

On the other hand, when my son was in 6th grade, we got a call from the mother of one of his friends, a boy who is a year older than our son because his parents held him back a year so he'd be better at sports, and the mother was complaining because our son told her son that Santa wasn't real, and asking us not to spoil the enjoyment for our sons. We nodded and thanked her, then got off the phone and were like, WFT?!?!, you're kids old enough to be in 7th grade and still thinks Santa is real?!?! He's gonna get f'd up big time when he goes to the public school for 7th grade and has to deal with all sorts of kids with different beliefs!

I was a feral child and don't recall, but I know my son knew for a long time but played along very convincingly so that his little sisters wouldn't know. My wife (very cleverly) deduced it was the Avon lady.

Wait. What are you trying to say about Santa? I know he hasn't visited last few years, but I put that down to my choatic and nomadic existence.

Just what the fuck are you trying to say?

I was 10 that Christmas and my Space 1999 Eagle I got for Christmas from Santa was in a box that had a layaway sticker or a shipping sticker addressed to my parents...That day all the walls came falling sown.

My mom took me for a drive and told me. Dunno the age. I was a rube for a while. She was like, boom, Santa, boom Easter Bunny, boom Tooth Fairy. I was expecting Booom God next.

When the little min-pool table clearly came from Brookstone and /not/ Santa's workshop.

I was really pleased when Mrs. Darcs told me that a kid who oscillates between being a friend and being a bully to the elder of the two Mini-Darcs told her "Mommy, I dont know why she would make up such a mean lie"