Secret Santa time already??

I have noticed via my stat tracker that my page has been getting a lot of hits coming from the search string, "Secret Santa Questionnaire."

So, in honor of that, I thought I would repost the "My Secret Santa Is a Genius" post from December 6, 2006:

We are doing a secret Santa program at my school, and the gift exchanges began today. I won't find out who MY secret Santa is until next Monday afternoon, but I am already looking forward to finding out. Today, I got possibly the greatest secret Santa gift ever.

I was in a fifth-grade classroom this morning, monitoring their social studies benchmark test. Do to an infinitesimal percentage of teachers cheating on the TAKS test, none of us are allowed to administer important tests to our own students anymore. So the fifth-grade teachers were in our rooms, and vice versa. This in itself is the subject for a rant at another time.

So there I was, standing sternly at the back of this classroom, when one of our substitute office personnel walked by and motioned me out into the hallway. She asked if I was Mister Teacher, which of course, I was. She handed me a bulging US Post Office express mail package. It was addressed to me in, allegedly having been sent from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. Originally being from DC myself, I was a bit suspicious that the ZIP code did not look correct, but other than that, it looked very official. So of course, I was wondering what the heck was going on.

I waited until the test was over and I had gotten back to my classroom before opening the package. There were three things inside. One was a small note. A second item was a small baggy containing three lottery tickets. The third item was shrouded in a large piece of brown paper.

I read the note. It said, "Mister Teacher, this is the best we could part with from Julius Caesar. Hope it will fit with your collection. Thanks."

As far as secret Santa gifts go, this was shaping up to be a most bizarre example. It was soon to get even stranger. I unwrapped the large bulky item, and I found a large bone with a few shreds of meat still hanging determinedly from it. For about 10 seconds, my mind cycled through all of the possible third words for the phrase, "What the--?”Then I remembered. This was exactly what I had asked for.

Every year, before we select each other and find who we will be giving gifts to, we fill out a short questionnaire. Favorite color, food, music, etc. Needless to say, I very rarely take that questionnaire seriously. My answers are almost always of the facetious variety. So this year, when asked for hobbies, my response was, "Collecting the bones of ancient Roman emperors.

"Can I just say one more time -- my secret Santa is a freakin’ GENIUS!!!

Now I feel kind of bad for the person I have. I just got them a lousy iPod…

Oh, I should also mention that I think I won $10 off of one of the lottery cards...