Every year the kids would ask to see Santa and every year I would make up a lame excuse and then distract them as quickly as possible, yet another shining example of being a bad mom!

But I was being a bad mom for one very important reason, mall Santa’s are on drugs.  To be fair, I only know of one mall Santa to have been incapacitated by illegal substances, but that one Santa ruined it for my kids and me.

I was 16-years-old and working at the CD store in the mall.  A week before Christmas, the mall Santa wandered into the store where I was working in his full Santa outfit and proceeded to decimate the good name of “Santa”.

I was working with another teenage girl who we will call “Samantha”.  Samantha was a bit on the bigger side, but it wasn’t very noticeable because when you looked at her, all you saw were her gigantic boobs.   When Santa stumbled in, Samantha approached him and asked if she could help him find anything?

Santa responded by asking her, “do you have any acid?”

Samantha, unsure how to react, answered, “we have Lords of Acid or Crystal Method.” (Those were two techno bands at the time.)

Santa got very loud and asked her, “what if Santa’s ON acid?!”

At this point, the hoards of holiday shoppers stopped what they were doing just in time to hear Santa exclaim, “my God, you have enormous boobs!” He then turned and ran out of sight.

I called mall security who informed me Santa had tottered into a nearby shoe store and was currently terrorizing the people there, but assured me they had it under control.  A few moments later, we saw the mall security guards, wearing their pressed white shirts and Mountie-style hats, escort Santa past the CD store.  Santa was crawling on all fours.

After roughly 15-minutes, the mall security guards came back in carrying Santa’s beard as a souvenir and informed Samantha and me they had handed Santa off to the police and guaranteed us we wouldn’t have any more problems with the mischievous elf.

Just as the wanna-be Mounties finished reassuring us, Santa (minus his beard) ran past the CD store at a full sprint, followed closely by the aforementioned police officer and then immediately after by the two security guards (one of whom was still holding the beard).

Santa darted to his “village” at the center of the mall (near the entrance to the CD store), he was so nimble and quick! He grabbed a giant stuffed reindeer and turned with a jerk to run back past the CD store.  As he passed us, tightly clutching the stolen reindeer, he enthusiastically waved one hand at Samantha and yelled, “bye Big-Titty-Girl!!”

Santa then got tackled by the cop.

As I stood there watching the police officer and two security guards wrestle with Santa and a stuffed reindeer in the middle of the mall, I swore to myself that I would never, ever let my kids meet Santa.

The next day, there was a new Santa.  She only had one leg.

I have no idea what happened to that mall Santa, nor do I know if he was actually part of a work release program.  But I can say with 100% certainty that I will forever remember the man I affectionately call “Work Release Santa” and Samantha’s giant boobs.