Santa's Little Helpers

Tiffany's dad Gary, a pilot, had a layover in San Francisco on Christmas Eve. On the Eve of Christmas Eve, Tiffany came to me, giddy with excitement as I was changing for dinner.

"I forgot to tell you!" she yelled. "We're going to be elves!"

"Huh?"

"Elves! We're going to dress up like elves when we pick up my dad at the airport!"

So that's what we did. On our way home from dinner, we stopped at Walgreens and picked up poster board and crayons. The next morning, a few hours before his flight arrived, we lay on our stomachs on the carpet and colored.

"HO HO HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!" my poster said.

Tiffany's said:

"WELCOME TO SF, CAPTAIN DAD!"

With just an hour before Elf-ing, we changed into our outfits. Strangely, we both own pairs of green pants bought many St. Patrick's Days ago and never worn since. We put on red shirts and looked at ourselves in the mirror.

"Okay," Tiffany said. "So all we need are Santa hats, jingle bells and elf shoes."

"Do you think we really need elf shoes?" I said. "I mean, look at us."

"We don't wear the shoes," she said, drawing out her words like I was an idiot. "We kneel on them, like this."

Here, she took a pair of slip-ons from our closet and knelt on them, holding her poster down low so that the toes of the shoes peeked out from underneath. I stood back, examining the effect. She did, in fact, look miniature, Elf-ish.

Apparently, there were a lot of other Elves and Santas running around San Francisco on Christmas Eve because we had to hit up four different drug stores before we found Santa Hats.

At the airport, we got lots of strange looks. One woman refused to take our picture, backing away from us and shaking her head.

"Elf-hater," I whispered.

When Gary came out, he almost didn't see us we were so far below eye level. But when he did, he grinned. Then, he reached behind him to his carry-on and pulled out his own Santa hat and a red sack filled with our presents.

"Dear God," I said to Tiffany. "It's so clear to me now where you come from."