Shortcake sounds like a jazz singer, particularly in the morning. This is a natural occurrence and happens every holiday season. It's right on schedule with appearing in week 2. Luckily, it has not manifested into a cold yet (knock on wood), and Shortcake is able to keep the coughing at bay by sucking on an inordinate amount of cough drops throughout the day.
Shortcake came in this morning and discovered all of the stanchions had been moved from the front line. She and Teddy Bear spent 30 minutes setting them back up, and then Shortcake went to work on Strolley Alley and the Parade Hallway. Here's the deal. You don't mess with Santa; you don't mess with the elves and you do NOT rearrange the stanchions. Shortcake will find you. And then punish you by making you crowd captain when 15 school groups show up, all at the same time, and the line goes from nothing to halfway down Stroller Alley in 5 minutes.
Because of her gravelly voice, Shortcake was thankful for a slow day at stations that didn't require much talking. She met some characters though.
There is a man who has two baby dolls - one boy, one girl - to which he added fangs and horns. He brings them to see Santa every year. Today, the girl doll came through, and he stopped to talk to Shortcake for a bit.
An actor Shortcake met in November came through the line with his daughter. He recognized Shortcake's face, but he couldn't quite place her out of context. His daughter refused to wear shoes before seeing Santa, and afterwards, was only wearing one shoe. It was very fashion forward.
There were two boys, Drew and Michael, who were brothers. Drew was very talkative, telling Shortcake that he was with his brother Michael, his gran, his great gran, his mom, his dad and his grandpa. Michael was also chatty, but he could barely get a word in edgewise around his big brother.
Katie and Bella and Penelope were wearing matching dresses. Katie was quite talkative, and Bella refused to acknowledge that Penelope was her sister.
Alex and Brandon were brothers who came to see Santa, going through the line twice. (This happens often, particularly when the line is short. Boys like to go through again to look at the train display again.) Brandon would talk to Shortcake, but Alex wouldn't say a word. He did spell out the alphabet by writing letters in the air. He made it up to the letter "R" (which he mixed up), and then spelled his own name. And he was only 3.
Miranda was a little girl (wearing a purple flannel shirt - awesome) who decided to cling to Shortcake's leg while she was at the main exit. Apparently, Miranda was afraid of Santa, but she clearly wasn't afraid of strangers, since she walked right to Shortcake, hugged her leg, hid behind her, and had to be pried off by her father.
Hunter was a 6-year-old boy who came to see Santa with his parents. It was his dad's birthday, but Hunter didn't sing "Happy Birthday" for his dad. Instead they were going to go out to dinner and then to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall. (By the by, how is "roomette" in the spellcheck, but not "rockette?" What is a "roomette" anyway? Oh. It's a sleeper car on a train. Thank you Wikipedia.)
There was a girl wearing a pink chiffon dress who did ballet with Shortcake while waiting in line. The girl had mastered first position but needed work on second and fifth.
There was an 8 year old who was wearing his coat over his head. Literally over it, covering half his face. When Shortcake called him on it, he then proceeded to hide his whole face, then hid behind his mother and tried to avoid being seen. Meanwhile his 11 year old brother was completely underwhelmed by the Santaland experience and couldn't even muster excitement to talk about the Rockettes show they had seen before coming to see Santa. They were the underwhelmed family.
There was a baby dressed in a zebra outfit. Sprocket and Shortcake called out for animal control fearing zebras were loose in the store. (It was funny to the mom.)
Because it was so cold and dry today (a wind chill in NYC around 20 degrees F - that's below 0 for you Celsius people), static electricity was rampant. Kids would take off their coats and hats and look like they had just been touched by electricity. Hairs were standing up all over the place.
There were three boys who, while waiting near the registers, decided to lie flat on the floor, on their stomachs, spread-eagled. And then one of the boys started turning. Shortcake turned around happened to spot the boy in the middle of this hilarity.
The best part of the day was the contingent of dads waiting by the main exit. They didn't want to wait in Santaland for their families to come out, so they waited in women's coats. And they were there for a good half hour, at least. Now, when Shortcake works the main exit, she says good-bye to the folks leaving Santaland, gives them directions to the bathrooms, elevators, ornaments, puppet theater, while simultaneously acting as a bouncer for the people mistakenly thinking the exit is an entrance. So the dad's started doing the bouncer job for Shortcake. Families would head toward the exit, and a dad would go "Uh-uh. Wrong way. That's the exit." Another family would ask for the bathroom and a dad would say "7th floor." They didn't have to help out; they just did it because. It kinda felt like the spirit of Christmas, right there in the women's coat section of Macy's.
Here's a short story about department store Santas that showed up in Shortcake's RSS feed.
In a completely different vein, there was a comment sent to Shortcake correcting her about the nature of the Immaculate Conception. You can read the Wikipedia article here, but the gist is that Mary was conceived the old fashioned way (turns out St. Anne did get to have some fun) and born without the stain of original sin. The Annunciation to Mary is when Gabriel showed up and told her she was pregnant with Jesus despite being a virgin. You can read about it here. Shortcake just learned that it is celebrated in March, 9 months before Christmas, which makes so much more sense than celebrating it 17 days before Christmas.
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