One day, Santa decided to go for a nice walk in the park, but he couldn’t find his shoe. Mrs. Claus was cooking breakfast downstairs in the kitchen. He searched upstairs for about 20 minutes and after not finding the shoe he grew impatient. Santa came running downstairs in a hurry. Frantically, he started searching through drawers, closets, under chairs, even in the bathtub! Santa had a bad habit of loosing “important” stuff. Sometimes that bad habit really caused major problems for Santa and others. For instance, a few years back on Christmas Eve Santa misplaced his list of children who deserved presents. Consequently, not one child received gifts on Christmas day!
Mrs. Claus watched Santa for a few minutes. He placed his first shoe down on the counter and went looking for the other. She kind of found it amusing that he was in distress. Pacing back and forth always annoyed her so… she finally decided to help him. Meanwhile, breakfast was still cooking in the kitchen. Mrs. Claus became so preoccupied with Santa’s missing shoe that she forgot about the food in the kitchen! She sniffed the air and said …

“Gee, honey do you smell something?”

Then it suddenly dawned on her she had left the food on the hot stovetop. Santa and Mrs. Claus hurdled downstairs and came upon a counter full of flames of flames. The whole left side of the kitchen was ablaze.

“First my shoe… Now my home?!” cried Santa, as his knees buckled with dreadfulness.

Like deer in front of headlights, they staggered at the foot of the staircase. They stood there just gazing at the raging inferno. Suddenly, they heard banging at the door. It was the elves coming to save the day! They busted through the door to put out the fire.

“How did you guys know?” Mrs. Claus asked.


“We saw the smoke from far away and we knew your fireplace doesn’t work so… we postulated that something was on fire, and we came to investigate.” They all said in unison.

They patted, threw water, uased fire extinguishers, spat, kicked, fussed, and fought with the fire. Within 7 minutes the fire was extinguished , but the kitchen was charred! Mrs. Claus and Santa were at the door scanning their destroyed kitchen. Mrs. Claus fainted from the sight.


“Quickly, get her outside for some fresh air!” demanded Santa.

The elves lifted her up and carried her to the porch outside… with Santa following behind them. Everyone surrounded her body and tried to awaken her. One elf splashed some water on her face… she opened her eyes. Santa reached his arms out and leaned in , to embrace her, but as he leaned forward he noticed his shoe on the mulch in the garden.

“Hey, my shoe!!!” he yelled.

“So you mean to tell me… all this for nothing?!” asked Mrs. Claus.

“Well… yeah… sorta… kind of.” replied Santa.

Mrs. Claus took a deep breath of relief, smiled and then fainted once again!