The day started bright, and for the first day of December it was pretty warm. Jane Rizzoli drove her bike with gusto.
"Look, ma, I'm all Evel Knievel. Bet, I 'm badass enough to win a race against Casey the school bully!" Jane made a slide with her bike, the gravel from the street jumped up like a rainbow of grey and street-gravel landed in the new coiffure of Angela Rizzoli.
"Dammit, Jane, be a little more careful. Why can't you just play with your Barbie dolls like Emily? You are not a boy you know. A young lady doesn't behave like that!" Angela exacerbated voice resounded into an almost quiet street. She wiped the gravel out of Jane's hair and tried the up-most to somehow lick her daughter's hair into shape.
"Ma, ma... sorry, but I have to beat Casey, our Rizzoli honor depends on it!"
"I can't imagine that a simple bicycle race can save our honor, and besides, we didn't ever lose it, Jane! Go inside, wash your hands and face, Grandma is coming at three!"
Angela Rizzoli started to retrieve into her house, not before shouting to Jane. "No bikes in the house and don't forget to take off your shoes, pronto, pronto!"
..
Scrubbed, ironed and in her neatest clothes, Jane listened to Grandma's stories about when she was a little kid at Christmas time and how one year she earned herself a brick of coal in her stocking. Of course this intrigued Jane more then all the lovey-dovey Christmas Carols most adults told their kids, so naturally she wanted to know exactly why and how Grandma got into trouble with Santa as a kid!
"Well," said Grandma, in all her wisdom and grace avoided Angela's warning stare and continued with still that glittering in her eyes as she had while doing 'the deed':
Grazia Rizzoli was always bolder and rougher then other girls her age, and even boy's did have trouble to keep up with this very feisty girl.
One day she said (and the idea came actually out of nowhere) that she wanted to know if Santa's beard was real and if his cap really was glued into his skull (which she heard from an older boy btw). So never running from a challenge..or a promise she made so she decided that the following Saturday was the big day for a little investigation!
"It definitely runs in the family then!" Jane commented.
"I can only agree with that, Jane" Grandma told Jane. "So, Saturday came and..."
..
In a cafe in Castelmola, the local bartender Luiggio Periscozzi was our Santa Claus (I still believed, I did until I was 12!):
Grazia's hand were sweaty and her heart-rate was abnormal high for someone who just sat on a chair waiting for her name to be called out by an Elf. As in a daze she sat on Santa's knees when her turn came to whisper her Christmas wishes into his ear.
Looking into the crowd, she saw her friends looking with expectation in their eyes. Would she do it, they ask to themselves, nudging and elbowing each other as Grazia leaned into Santa and her hands reached out to Santa's precious beard.
Grazia reached out to the old man's beard... Wooshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh
"Real!" Grazia thought to herself, and knowing after this 'devilish act' she had not really a lot of time to explore the head/cap/glue theory so she pulled with a bigger force then that she herself expected and Waaaaaaap Woooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
Flying like a saggy puppet she fell from Santa's knee, his cap WITH extra's in her hand!
Santa jumps up, his hand onto his bald scalp, yelping "Goddammit Santa Lucia, I kill that child!" He had totally forgotten that he was Santa and there were children in the cafe and father Egidius from the local church too!
..
"That day I discovered that he wore a wig which was glued to a red Santa-cap and NOT to his head, Santa was non-existing and the bartender of "Luiggi Piccolo' was bald!" Grandma Rizzoli's laughing tears streamed over her faces as she told the last part.
Jane's laughed so hard, she had to run to the toilet and just could hear her mother scolding Grandma Rizzoli that she better not could have Jane crazy ideas regarding Santa.
..
"And did she win the bike race and was Santa safe from her misdeeds?" Maura asked Jane's grandma, still with glittering eyes from laughing about illustrious Grandma Rizzoli's mishaps regarding Santa.
"You think that it was funny, huh?" Grazia Rizzoli asked Maura and winked at her, then continued; "Well, Luiggi sold the cafe and went into a monastery. Father Egidius almost excommunication him. It was that Luiggi made a big gift to the church that he wasn't. And yes, Jane won the bike race. Only Father Patrizio wasn't too charmed when she later that day threw orange peels through the church onto the altar during the Christmas mass. He personally kicked her out of the church, but she was the hero of the neighborhood children after that day.."
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