Santa's Workshop Left Right Story

It was the night before the sleigh leaves, and Santa's workshop was loud. Hammers on the left. Saws on the right. Down the middle ran a conveyor belt that went clunk, clunk, clunk, carrying toys to the far end of the room, where an elf named Gus Pinecone checked every single one and said either "Good" or "Nope."

Gus had worked at the right end of that belt for four hundred and twelve years. He had a clipboard. He had a whistle. He had a pencil behind his left ear and another pencil behind his right ear, in case the first one quit.

This year Gus had a helper. Her name was Juniper, it was her very first Christmas in the workshop, and she was so excited that she had come in at four in the morning, left her coat on, and painted forty rocking horses before anybody told her the rocking horses were on the left and she was supposed to be on the right.

"Rule number one," said Gus. "Toys for the East go in the sack on the left. Toys for the West go in the sack on the right. Rule number two: never, ever touch the big red lever." Juniper asked what the big red lever did. Gus just looked at her, the way you look at somebody who is about to touch a big red lever.

So Juniper got to work. A train set: left. A basketball: right. A stuffed penguin: left. A drum: left. Then she took the drum back out and put it right, then left again, because she couldn't decide which half of the country deserved a drum less.

Everything went fine until about midnight, when a reindeer named Clementine stuck her head in through the window on the left to see what was taking so long, and bumped the big red lever with her nose.

The conveyor belt stopped. It shook. Then it started going the other way. Toys that had been going right started going left. Toys that had been going left started going right. A box of crayons flew right off the end and landed in the hot chocolate.

"Nobody panic," said Gus, who was panicking. He blew his whistle to the left. He blew his whistle to the right. Forty elves ran left, crashed into forty elves running right, and sat down very hard in a pile of wrapping paper.

Juniper was the only one still standing. She looked at the lever. She looked at Clementine. She looked at Gus, who was upside down in a bin of rubber ducks. Then she reached right up and pulled the lever back down.

The belt groaned, stopped, and started again, the right way this time. The elves cheered. Clementine cheered, which in reindeer sounds a lot like a sneeze. Gus climbed out of the rubber ducks with one duck still stuck to his left boot and said, "Well. That's one way to do it."

Now they had to fix the sacks. The East sack had West toys in it. The West sack had East toys. One sack just had a rubber duck. So every elf grabbed a toy and passed it, left down the line, right down the line, left again, right again, until every toy was where it belonged and every elf was dizzy.

At five in the morning, Santa came down to check. He looked at the sack on the left. He looked at the sack on the right. He looked at Gus, who had a rubber duck on his boot and hot chocolate on his clipboard, and he said, "Everything all right in here?" "Right as rain," said Gus.

Then Santa looked down at Juniper. "I hear somebody pulled the lever," he said. Juniper's ears turned pink. "Good," said Santa. "Somebody had to." And he gave her a little gold bell for her hat, which is what you get at the North Pole when you do the right thing at the right time.

There was one toy left on the belt. It had no tag. Nobody knew which sack it went in. It was wrapped in green paper with a silver bow, and it was rolling slowly toward the end of the belt, wobbling left a little, then right a little.

Juniper picked it up. "I know where this one goes," she said. She handed it to the elf on her left, who handed it to the elf on his left, and it went around and around the whole workshop until it stopped, right here, in your hands. The elves packed it just for you. The end.