In December 2005, I taught 7th grade. The middle school that I worked at was right across the street from an elementary school. Christmas was right around the corner and I had one student, we’ll just call him Chris, who would go to pick up his little sister, we’ll call her Karen, after school.
One day Chris came into my room with Karen, his little sister and she was bawling her eyes out.
Chris came up to me saying, “Miss, I need your help. I can’t get my little sister to stop crying!”
Trying to calm Karen down, I asked her what was wrong.
She said, “We were learning about Christmas in school today and they told us that Santa Claus comes down your chimney to give you presents. But we don’t have chimneys in Hawaii! So Santa Claus isn’t gonna come!”
She started to cry again and Chris looked at me as if to say, “Miss, you’ve got to help me. I don’t know what to do and if my dad sees her like this, he’ll kill me!”
So, thinking on my feet, I said, “You know what menehune are, right?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Well, for Hawaii, menehunes are elves and every year Santa chooses one menehune from Hawaii and he has the little menehune get him a special key,” I said.
“Special key?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s a key that lets you open the doors of any house in Hawaii. So on Christmas Eve, the little menehune that holds onto the key meets up with Santa at the top of Diamond Head. They meet up and the menehune takes Santa to all the good little boys’ and girls’ houses and uses the special key to open all their doors. They go in, give you your presents and leave before you even know it.”
With tears still in her eyes but a big smile on her face, she said, “That’s really how it happens?”
“Come on, I’m a teacher after all.” I felt all slick as I said that.
“So I will get presents! Yay! Thank you so much Miss!” Karen said.