Over with the politics, on to the military…

You’ve probably heard the story before but it’s one I’d forgotten: the typo in the 1955 Sears ad that had small children thinking they were calling Santa when what they were getting was the red hotline phone at the Continental Air Defense Command at the height of the Cold War.

That phone was not expected to ring. You did not want that phone to ring.

It wasn’t the Pentagon nor the President, it was a small child. “Is this Santa Claus?”

The tension and surprise showed in the officer’s voice and the little one started crying. The colonel stopped himself and reached out like the daddy that he was.

And that is why (there’s an interview with the colonel’s kids in this link) we have NORAD tracking Santa every Christmas Eve, giving updates as the famous sleigh and reindeer travel around the world. For the magic of it.

I wonder if the person who typed up that ad ever knew what they inadvertently made happen for every child of every year since. I like to think that surely they did.

Some mistakes are just plain meant to be.