***
After spending a long night running on the treadmill, St. Nick was startled to hear the knock on his gym door. He had thought his mannequins would deter such distractions, but he was clearly mistaken. When he answered the door, he saw a little man with pointy ears standing there with a cup held in his outstretched hand. The little man, who wore green pants and a frown, introduced himself as Buddy, an elf.
“Never heard of you,” St. Nick told his visitor in the spaces between his heavy panting.
“I come from a village to the west,” said Buddy the elf.
“Why come at all?” St. Nick asked.
The saddened elf could barely make eye contact with St. Nick when asked the question, but he did his best to answer anyway.
“We are an impoverished people and I-I’ve come looking for work.”
St. Nick valued his privacy, and he did not like the idea of anyone coming around to bother him or to use his stuff, and he certainly did not like the idea of having to pay someone to hang around him all day. So, he told the young elf to get lost. Then he bolted his door shut to make sure the elf didn’t try to sneak in somehow.
But the message was lost on the elf. He knocked again and again until grumpy St. Nick unlocked the door and opened it. When St. Nick asked him again what he wanted, the sad elf stuck to his story.
“My village is about to die,” he said. “My people need employment if we’re to feed ourselves.”
St. Nick thought about Buddy’s plight a little longer this time. He considered what it was like to live in poverty. But then he decided that he, too, was impoverished, and the difference between him and the elf was that he took care of himself, and the elf clearly needed others to take care of him. St. Nick was a doer, not a waiter, so he decided not to wait to do what needed done.
“I feel for you,” he said. “So, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to say no. Not because I don’t care, but because I do care. As you return to your village, you can think about how.”
Buddy looked wounded, and St. Nick did not understand why. The greatest thing he could do for this elf, and for this elf’s people, was to teach him of the ways of the world. Buddy needed to know that the world was restrictive, discriminating, and cruel. He needed to know the world was not a charitable place. The world was out only for itself. Surely Buddy would’ve, no, should’ve understood the gift wise St. Nick was giving him, the gift of knowledge. Or, if he didn’t, he could figure it out as he returned to his village.
“Please, sir,” the elf said. “We need a job or we will starve.”
“Then do as I do and eat roots and dead reindeer,” said St. Nick.
“We cannot travel far, for the land is harsh. Those who have ventured far have never returned.”
“Traveling takes practice. And muscle.” St. Nick noticed how scrawny the young elf really was. “You need to build your body, and your skill. When you’ve done both, then you can fend for yourself.”
“How can I build my body without food? How can I build my skill without work?”
St. Nick thought about the elf’s questions. Several times he attempted to answer them. Each time he stopped before he spoke, second-guessing the response he was about to give. He could see that Buddy had posed a more difficult situation for him to consider, one not so easily dismissed. It was true that the body needed food before it could grow stronger. It was true that skill could increase only when practiced often. And even though he could argue that traveling a little farther from the village each journey was a nice and steady way to progress in skill, one that could almost guarantee a return, St. Nick could not ignore the one core problem that Buddy posed, the problem that the poor elf seemed to have no matter what he did on his own: no elf could build his body without food, and no elf could return from a long trip if he starved to death on his practice journey. Simply telling the elf to find a way and then shut the door in his face wouldn’t have taught him anything useful. So, he thought about the conditions the elf must’ve lived in, and thought about how the elf could grow in his strength and skill from where he lived. The answer came to him when he thought about how best to find food where none seemed to grow.
“You must dig through the ice,” St. Nick said. “Dig until you find earth. And then build a fire to keep the ice from coming back. Then plant a tree and eat from it when it grows fruit. The digging will give you strength. The planting will give you character.”
“It is barren here in the North Pole. No tree would ever survive. And we do not have the tools in which to dig.”
St. Nick began to wonder how these people ever survived in the first place.
“We used to barter for our food,” Buddy said. “But we can no longer pay the merchant who comes here in the summer. It is why we need a job.”
St. Nick thought about it some more. Surely there was something they could do to take care of themselves without the need of him, or their precious traveling merchant. The answer finally came to him, just as he was about to concede that there were no more answers.
“Survival of the fittest,” he said. “You fight your brethren to the death and eat the losers. Strength, character, survival—everything you could ever want.”
The elf was horrified by his last answer. The more he thought about it, the more he was horrified by it, too.
“Okay, bad plan, but I have nothing else,” he said.
The elf was mystified. His face trembled, then he grew hot with anger. The reclusive St. Nick felt something in his own chest that he had never felt before. There was some kind of tension taking over. The hairs on his skin rose. He felt something akin to…fear. He began to wonder if this desperate elf was sizing him up for character assassination. That was, perhaps, the last thing a person needed, especially one trying to better himself in every way. Suddenly, he felt compassion for the elf, as if it were a long forgotten defense mechanism kicking in to save him.
“Maybe I’ll see if I can find something for you to do around here,” he said.
And so began the relationship between St. Nick and his elves.