How Richard Dawson Robbed Me of my Childhood

**BIG-TIME SPOILER ALERT HERE! DO NOT LET YOUR KIDS READ THIS UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED TO STRIP THEM OF THEIR CHILDHOOD!!!!**

It was the summer before Kindergarten. I was five. My grandmother and I were in the living room watching “Family Feud.”

**SERIOUSLY, DO NOT LET SMALL CHILDREN NEAR YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT NOW!!**

Richard Dawson (yes, it was long enough ago that Richard Dawson was hosting --- and our TV only got four channels) gave his contestants the following challenge:

“One hundred people surveyed, top three answers are on the board,” he began. “Name an imaginary character children believe in.”

Since this was also long enough ago that the remote control had not been invented, my grandmother sat helplessly on the sofa behind me, unable to switch to “The Newlywed Game” fast enough…

“Santa Claus!” the first contestant replied.

*BING*

My heart sank.

“Easter Bunny!” the second said.

*BING*

My head started spinning.

“The Tooth Fairy!” the third contestant quickly exclaimed.

*BING*

I turned to look at my grandmother, my jaw dragging behind on the shag carpet. She shrugged her shoulders and said, “Yep.”

And, just like that, my childhood was gone.

This experience probably has a lot to do with why, throughout my entire grade school career, I dreaded conversations that turned to the debate of whether the Easter Bunny was a real bunny or a person dressed up like one, whether Santa made the toys or bought them, or whether the Tooth Fairy was a girl or a boy (actually, that one didn’t really start until college).

It also probably has a lot to do with how blown away I am, year after year, that I am able to get my own kids to buy into it at all.

“Well, kids, every Easter Sunday, just as he has since the empty tomb was first discovered 2000 years ago, the Easter Bunny breaks into all the Christian homes on every continent around the world in one night and single-handedly delivers marshmallow chicks and hollow chocolate replicas of all his friends for children to eat in celebration of Jesus rising from the dead. And he hides the candy, creeping all over the house, leaving nothing but a trail of plastic grass behind him. Most amazing of all is that he does this while you are tucked in bed sleeping just one room away!”

Normally this kind of story would induce nightmares in small children. And yet, amazingly, children welcome the idea of an animal breaking and entering, as long as he comes bearing Reece’s Peanut Butter Eggs and jelly beans.

(Actually, I feel the same way.)

I am now down to two believers out of my four. Amelia recently figured it out on her own. But Ellie – poor little Ellie - had to be told by me right after her tenth birthday.

“Mom,” she said one day, holding an old baby tooth, “I found this in your jewelry drawer. Is this from one time when the Tooth Fairy couldn’t find my tooth?”

I looked into her eyes, remembering the conversation we had just had two weeks earlier about how babies were made, and decided I couldn’t have her go on knowing about sex but not about the Tooth Fairy.

And, just to be sure she was completely stripped of all juvenile fantasies, I came clean on Santa and the Easter Bunny too.

Tears streamed down her little face as she learned that Mom and Dad not only had a secret in the bedroom, but they also had a secret on the eve of both major holidays. I felt like the Grinch, ripping her blissfully naïve childhood away from her that summer.

If only Richard Dawson could have been there to help ease the blow…