Here comes Santa Fraud ...

The pet charity The Wife and I volunteer with has an annual fund-raiser in which they dress some poor slob like Santa Claus and let customers at the local pet store have their pets’ photo taken with a counterfeit Kringle for $9.95, with $5 going to the charity and the rest covering the store’s expenses.

Last Sunday, the charity was short a Santa, so it ended with a short Santa. That’s right, I was the poor slob in the hot, itchy costume. I didn’t mind. In fact, it was kind of fun. I just don’t think I was the right man for the job. I’m not as svelte as I used to be, but at 150 pounds, my belly doesn’t shake like a bowl full of jelly – yet.

I put on the costume, and it reminded me of walking around in my dad’s shoes when I was a kid. It wasn’t quite tailored for my form, so I walked out to the dog aisle, snagged a pet bed and stuck it in my pants. The extra padding helped the illusion a bit, but I still looked like Santa on meth.

I still managed to fool a lot of little kids, who smiled, laughed, waved and begged me to say “Ho, ho, ho.”

Kids are stupid.

The photo op lasted from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., which meant five hours in the fat suit. The coat was so scratchy that I left my sweatshirt on underneath. After putting on a wig, fake beard, hat and gloves while listening to the painfully bad music the store plays incessantly, I was sweating to the oldies.

The good news is we sold more than 30 photo packages. The even better news is that none of our subjects peed on me or tried to take a bite out of Saint Nick. I also was happy that when I walked outside to cool off in the crisp December breeze that my borrowed dog bed, which I had forgotten about, did not set off the anti-theft device.