Olive the other Reindeer needed a warning and remedial training

It’S not quite predestination, but let’s be honest. You can pretty much tell the kind of adults children are going to be from very early on. Like, if you look at them closely in the cradle, writes Terry Prone. 

By the time they’re toddlers, the capacity to work out what they’re going to grow up to be becomes even more pronounced. I recently watched two little boys (no reference to a ditty no longer played because it was once sung by Rolf Harris) in a pre-school going at each other with such ferocity, you had to wonder if they would be returned intact to their parents at the end of the day. But when they exhausted their belligerence, they co-operated quite happily in some finger-painting. You could see them at a boardroom table a couple of decades down the road. Pitched battles and pints.

Sometimes, though, what you can see in a kid is more serious.

You can see, quite early on, their potential to grow into the kind of adult who gets their kicks from making the rest of us miserable. The ones who tell you about the stain on your collar just as you walk to the podium and can do nothing about it. The ones who bring you reports of every nasty thing anybody ever says about you. The ones who thank you for your Christmas present while telling you they’d never have time to read a book like that.

Christmas gives under-age versions of those evil joy-destroyers an opportunity par excellence to put their venom into action. Here’s an example. Two mothers of six and seven year old children told me last week of misery at the collection point. They found their offspring getting into the car, crushed worse than an avocado on toast. What’s wrong? Nothing. C’mon, who was bad to you? Each of the children, who go, let us be clear, go to schools in two quite different locations and have never met each other, sat fighting tears in silence until, in response to loving invasive mothers, they eventually named their separate tormentors. In each case, it was a slightly older girl. Not saying that boys don’t do this, but an example has yet to surface. “This” being torturing the younger kids with questions inviting ridicule about their belief in Santa Claus. The two mothers flapped around but found different ways of re-establishing their children’s faith. Because that’s a mother’s main job.

The late Jonathan Philbin Bowman characterised a small section of humanity as “day-makers.” Meaning people who make your day. Whenever you meet them, that’s what they do. They make your day. They should be paid by the State to simply exist, the day-makers. The opposite to a day-maker is a day-destroyer, and they, on the other hand, need extermination. And if they’re headed that way at eight years of age, a bit of tough love needs applying. Because happiness is not based on myth-destruction. Happiness is based on hopes and dreams and beliefs that have no scientific basis, and are the more valuable for that very reason.

Santa, in my home, had a major task when it came to filling my stocking, because my mother had, I suspect, knitted so massive a sock that it must have been made of hawsers using broom handles instead of knitting needles. Turning the heel alone must have taken a month of hard labour. I would write my letter to Santa and — heavily supervised — would throw it into the fire. I didn’t know that my father was stationed at the door of the sitting room, ready, with a rapidly closed door, to create a draught which would send the letter straight-up the chimney on its way to the North Pole. That was Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day, the stocking would be mis-shapen and distended with exciting odd shapes. Getting right down to the toe would take forever, each discovery better than the last. My big sister would hold it so I could select individual items from it and help me work out how to play with each emerging treasure.

Looking back, it seems that all gifts ended up being credited to Santa, even if at the time I knew they were given by others. Curiously, the ones that stick most in memory are the ones I failed to make good use of. My ambitions greatly out-did my talents. Starting with music. Whether it was the plastic clarinet or the mahogany zither, each was received with

the glad cries of yearning fulfilled and each went on to gather dust, cherished but unmastered.

Same thing with the sewing machine. Although I can still remember its magical silhouette against the light from the Christmas tree, with a tiny bobbin of blue thread balanced, ready to serve, I can remember nothing that was ever sewn on it by me, probably because nothing ever was.

I did master the pogo stick through relentless practice driven by the role model of a character in the Judy comic, who could leap tall buildings to rescue trapped babies, using her pogo stick. The twin truths of the pogo stick are a) that you can leap tall pebbles on one, and that’s as far as it goes, and b) it is so painful, it’s like having your spine subjected to one whiplash episode after another, all day long. But I wanted it, and so Santa came through with it.

Isn’t it interesting that those rotten kids who want to suck the happiness out of other kids’ Christmasses tend to have their misery recorded in fairytales and — indeed — in Christmas carols. Many of us, for example, grew up hating Olive. You remember Olive? Oh, come ON. Olive, the Other Reindeer, who used to laugh at Rudolph the Red Nosed reindeer, call him names and prevent him from joining any reindeer games? Exactly. THAT Olive.

Olive the Other Reindeer made such an impact on me that I still don’t quite trust anybody bearing that name. The fact that one of the senior executives in our company is an Olive has not reduced my mistrust. I’ve warned the other staff to keep an eye on her and report to me the first time she stops them joining any reindeer games.

I will be a lot better manager than Santa was, if a problem surfaces. Let’s face it, Santa wasn’t great when it came to bullying and exclusion. Olive, the Other Reindeer, needed a written warning and remedial training, but did old Father Christmas ensure it happened? No. He thought he solved the whole episode by having Rudolph guide his sleigh on a foggy night. I know a brilliant employment lawyer who could have won Rudolph two years salary for that failure.

Hoping all readers of this article have a great Christmas, Olive-free.

Let’s face it, Santa wasn’t great when it came to bullying and exclusion