’Twas the night before Christmas when I was just ten, when I wondered if Santa (or maybe my kin,) had messed up my present just ’cause I’d sinned.

The big present that year would be a new bike, since I’d flat worn out my old bike, a big, red, fat-tired Western Auto cruiser. Besides, the hot new thing was the Schwinn Stingray bike, a hot-rodlooking bike with high handlebars and a long, banana-shaped seat, and I made sure Santa knew I wanted the latest and coolest bike a guy could get in the mid-1960s.

To complicate things, I’d realized that the gifts that my parents got for me and my sister, separate from the Santa-delivered things, had to be hidden somewhere around the house, and I’d been snooping and finding things here and there. I was concerned, of course, that Santa would see my snooping and leave me nothing come Christmas, but he’d never penalized me for being bad yet. Yet.

It was on one of these snooping expeditions, deep in the scariest part of our basement, that I found The Bike. Still in the box, it was unmistakably marked Schwinn Stingray. I was dying to see it, but the box was sealed and stapled shut. There were, however, four hand-holes in the box, and, Santa forgive me, I peeked.

Uh-oh, somebody’s messed up, I thought. The little bit of bike I could see was blue, in an era when boys’ bikes were always red, and girls’ bikes were always blue. Why, I thought, didn’t my parents leave this most important gift for Santa to deliver? Santa wouldn’t have brought me a dang girl’s bike by mistake.

Well, I knew I could talk to Dad about anything, so I took him aside and somehow communicated my concern. He smiled and said, “So, you’ve been snooping in the basement, haven’t you?”

I admitted that I had, and I’d seen that The Bike was blue. He laughed, and said, “Let’s go for a little ride.” We drove a couple of blocks away to where sat the coolest car in our neighborhood, a brand-new 1966 Corvette Stingray that I’d drooled over every time we passed it.

“That’s the coolest car in the neighborhood, isn’t it?” he asked.

I had to agree.

“And what color is that Vette?” he asked.

“It’s metallic Astro Blue,” I responded, having memorized the Chevy brochures.

“It’s not what you’d call a ‘girly’ car, is it?” he asked with a knowing smile.

The truth was dawning on me – they hadn’t messed up after all.

“You can trust Santa, and you can trust me and your mom, we wouldn’t get this wrong, Kip. You’ll see.”

Sure enough, tucked in behind the tree Christmas morning was the wickedest boy’s bike I’d ever seen. It was indeed a bright metallic Corvette Blue-and-chrome Stingray bike, with high chrome ape-hanger handlebars and a metal-flake blueand silver banana seat. As I rolled it out to behold its eye-popping beauty, I saw it had a fat drag slick for a back tire, and a wheelie bar, and a speedometer that reached to 45 m.p.h. Man, it was definitely not a girl’s bike.

I remember being breathless and speechless at the sight, and later that morning my friends admired it with awed envy. I had the coolest bike on the block, and we all took turns doing wheelies and trying to “scratch off” with the drag slick.

I learned a lot that year. I learned that I could rely on Santa and my parents to get it right, and from that Christmas on, I never snooped again.

After all, I wouldn’t want Santa to think I didn’t trust him – a guy can push his luck only so far, even on Christmas Eve.