Zwarte Piet's sense of humour

Setting my shoe on the 5th of December was always quite exciting. I asked a few dozen times that evening whether my mom had some carrots & sugar cubes available to put in my shoe for Sinterklaas's horse. The shoe got carefully placed in front of the fireplace with the horse snacks and a drawing or letter for Sinterklaas.

In bed I listened to all the noises, wondering if Sinterklaas had arrived already. One time I was fairly certain to have heard them, but I was too intimidated to slip out of my bed. It's really not worth it to piss off Sinterklaas with a big "SURPRIIIIISE" yell when he's in the midst of arranging your presents neatly in a row while carefully checking his watch on his white gloved wrist (he must be a master in time management of course since he must visit all children's houses in one night).
The next morning my dad immediately affirmed my statement when I claimed I had heard the holy man and his Zwarte Pieten : "oh yes, they just came in when I was about to go to bed. Zwarte Piet urgently had to go to the toilet so I pointed him to the bathroom. You must have heard us whisper in the hallway". Oh man, that was so cool, Zwarte Piet had used our bathroom!!

Besides all the gifts obviously, it was usually Zwarte Piet who made me laugh in the morning. After all Sinterklaas is a solemn gentle old man who is not known for his jolly jokes but Zwarte Piet was always in for a laugh. He often answered my letters with a little note which reflected his spontaneous, goofy but distracted nature. The note often had errors in them eg a signature "Sinter Piet, euh I mean Zwarte Piet", which made me chuckle. When I received a massive amount of mandarins (Sinterklaas knows that I don't eat chocolate obviously), Zwarte Piet had left me some empty peels with a little excuse note to forgive him for eating some since he'd been incredibly hungry. When I was a bit older already, he had once left an empty bottle of beer because he'd been thirsty.
Every time he'd been up to something which made me laugh at the breakfast table and my dad usually thought it was all incredibly funny too.

In grade 3 I had declared to my parents that I didn't believe in Sinterklaas anymore for quite a while already. Promptly I only received very practical gifts anymore eg a compass to use in school....Pfff, I stopped putting my shoe on Dec 5th.

At the age of 11-12 years, I decided to put my shoe unexpectedly again in front of the chimney to see how 'Sinterklaas' would respond. With a big smile I walked to the fireplace before bedtime, pulled of a shoe and carefully placed it, said goodnight to my parents and went off to bed.
With the old-time excitement I went down to the living room the next morning to check out what I could find by my shoe.

a pack of female sanitary pads.....
with a little note from Zwarte Piet that these might come in handy in the coming year.
I was not impressed by Zwarte Piet's sense of humour anymore! Poooh



Interested to read more Sinterklaas memories? Here
No idea what all this Sinterklaas & Zwarte Piet stuff is about? Fourier Analyst (American expat in the Netherlands) did a wonderful job explaining here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V and Part VI

Comments

jokemijn said…
haha :D love your story!
Snooker said…
Very cute!
Thanks for the morning chuckle!

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