Writing Sample 3: Creative (Excerpt from An Original Short Story)
Santa
When you first find out you’re adopted, everything changes. Your parents,
Saul and Judy Schwartz, aren’t really your parents. Your bratty sister Rachel isn’t
really your sister. And, you’re told, you aren’t really Jewish after all. Still, you go to
college, despite your natural gentile instincts to be a carpenter, and you take some
time off before law school to go to church and ask a few plastic surgeons about
reacquiring foreskin. After college, you find an apartment with a fireplace in the
Irish part of town. You get a tattoo. You buy The Bible and only read the end. And,
most importantly, you buy a Christmas tree, decorating it with crucifixes, and strips
of bacon wrapped around blocks of cheese.
On Christmas Eve, you leave cookies and milk on a table by the tree. You fall
asleep, dreaming about the bare knees of Catholic school girls in plaid skirts and
the peppermint scent of a thousand candy canes overflowing from your stocking.
You are startled awake by a rustling sound. You creep into the kitchen with a
baseball bat. And, there he is. Jolly Rodger himself. Saint Freaking Nick.
“Ho, Ho, Ho?” he says, eyeing the bat in your hand, his guilty beard covered in
cookie crumbs. He has a familiar look about him, you think, and not just because his
is the face of Christmas. It’s like you have seen his eyes before. His smile. You
wonder if maybe this is the guy who cuts your corned beef at Stein’s Deli. Then, it
hits you. The truth. And you say, “Dad?” And, he says, “Son?” You drop the bat. A
sensation rushes to your head, like you just drank a Cherry Slurpee too fast, and you
stare into the gaze of your biological father, Santa Claus, for the very first time.
When you first find out you’re adopted, everything changes. Your parents,
Saul and Judy Schwartz, aren’t really your parents. Your bratty sister Rachel isn’t
really your sister. And, you’re told, you aren’t really Jewish after all. Still, you go to
college, despite your natural gentile instincts to be a carpenter, and you take some
time off before law school to go to church and ask a few plastic surgeons about
reacquiring foreskin. After college, you find an apartment with a fireplace in the
Irish part of town. You get a tattoo. You buy The Bible and only read the end. And,
most importantly, you buy a Christmas tree, decorating it with crucifixes, and strips
of bacon wrapped around blocks of cheese.
On Christmas Eve, you leave cookies and milk on a table by the tree. You fall
asleep, dreaming about the bare knees of Catholic school girls in plaid skirts and
the peppermint scent of a thousand candy canes overflowing from your stocking.
You are startled awake by a rustling sound. You creep into the kitchen with a
baseball bat. And, there he is. Jolly Rodger himself. Saint Freaking Nick.
“Ho, Ho, Ho?” he says, eyeing the bat in your hand, his guilty beard covered in
cookie crumbs. He has a familiar look about him, you think, and not just because his
is the face of Christmas. It’s like you have seen his eyes before. His smile. You
wonder if maybe this is the guy who cuts your corned beef at Stein’s Deli. Then, it
hits you. The truth. And you say, “Dad?” And, he says, “Son?” You drop the bat. A
sensation rushes to your head, like you just drank a Cherry Slurpee too fast, and you
stare into the gaze of your biological father, Santa Claus, for the very first time.
