Maya Erskine and I maybe ruined an essential part of a kid's childhood. After searching for stocking stuffers for our little ones at a gift shop in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Beverly Glen in mid-December, we took turns bragging about our parents' abilities to make Santa appear real when we were young. "You couldn't tell me he didn't leave those toys!" I say, swiping my credit card to pay for a few chocolate caramel candy bars for my daughter. "And that he didn't take bites out of the cookies!" the actress chimes in while playing with the wheel of a toy train she's bought for her son. "Our parents were on it," she adds. "I want to be like that."
Then it happens. A woman leans in and whispers, "My son is listening to you." "What?!" we both ask loudly, startled as she seemed to come out of nowhere. The woman whispers louder, clearly annoyed, "My son is listening to you." She glances over her shoulder toward her child, who is staring at us from a nearby aisle. Our eyes widen as we repeatedly apologize and rush out of the store and into the parking lot. As soon as the coast is clear, we burst out laughing and comfort each other for being clueless moms who should know better than to blab about the lies we tell our kids in public. "It was probably time," says Erskine mid-chuckle of shattering the kid's Christmas illusions. "He looked a little too old to still believe in Santa anyway."
