This girl either has a bright future or early onset trust issues. Or both.

My sister asked Santa for a signature to compare to friends and neighbors. She found a match and never believed after that.

I feel like if you're smart enough to understand how DNA tests work, you probably shouldn't still believe in Santa

Oh man, how do you play that? You confirm Santa, she never trusts the police after the age of 8. Admit santa doesn't exist You ruin this person's childhood.

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Overcome two big lies at once.

Parents should have known better sign with their non dominant hand

Nobody said she understands how they work. She's smart as hell to come up with this plan, but it still relies on matching the "DNA sample" she collected against . . . what exactly?

Maybe Santa Claus is in the system ok??? Or he did 23andme LOL

Spoiler alert: it was just icing.

The truth, DNA test came back nonconclusive, and maybe give the parents a hint to say something like "Santa took all the food he touched to be courteous" or something if they dont wanna say Santa isnt real.

Seems like something I would have done

Dear Penthouse,

I never thought this would happen to me.

Santa and his reindeer are sitting around having a circle jerk onto a cookie...

Yeah I don't remember ever believing in Santa, but it was fairly obvious that the handwriting on Santa's gifts looked a LOT like my mother's

I always pretended to believe, because I was afraid if I stopped, I would no longer get any gifts on Christmas lol

“Young lady, the only DNA we found on those cookies are from your mother placing them on the plate, and the Roanoke River Killer from taking a bite out of them.”

damn now how can they get out of this without crushing the dreams of thousands of kids? Say santa is real?

Would you be satisfied with a verdict of Satan Claus?

> “she never trusts the police after 8”

Don’t worry this one will sort itself out.

"The test results show, that Santa‘s your dad." "I knew it! I knew it all the time they couldn‘t be my parents! I‘m adopted!"

I remember asking Santa for a DNA kit & a fingerprint kit to see if Santa was real and I tried doing a bite analysis of the carrots with my dogs. Unfortunately I was too slow to take the carrots away from them in time...

I never got the DNA kit and the fingerprint kit was made for kids & cheap so I obviously could not gather the evidence I needed

Why the fuck do people think that finding out Santa Claus isn't real means a "ruined" childhood. Like seriously, most cultures throughout history never had a Santa Claus. Hell, I wasn't raised believing in Santa Claus. You guys are weird.

Well, in science you need evidence before making an absolute conclusion, so i’d say bright future.

If he is not in the system after those millions of break-ins, what is the police even there for?

Presumably against her parents? A match would be damning evidence of a conspiracy.

Or was convicted of a felony

Childhood ruined is a bit of an exaggeration, but a lot of the christmas magic is gone. You can't understand it if you never had it. I think you can compare it to being heartbroken after a break up. If you never loved someone before, you wouldn't get how it feels.

It's time for the talk.

it's a match to your mum and her boyfriend. sorry kid no evidence of your Dad/Santa

i love how the tone of this reads like an unironic r/kidsarefuckingstupid moment. i just can't help but imagine seeing this info get delivered onto this poor little girl left in tears, i shouldn't be laughing.

this story treats it like it's a cute little aw kids moment but in reality this poor girl is questioning everything 😭 like, this logically has to be her last step. she would be thinking "ok, this would prove it!" but if she knows it would, she would may have already considered "but how can i be the only one to have tried this? if there's such debate about him being real...wouldnt they have already tried..?"

this isn't someone writing with hope of proof. this poor girl is writing for closure. she's about to bust into dad's room going "WHAT ELSE DAD, HUH? THE TOOTH FAIRY? JESUS? MICHAEL JACKSON? ARE YOU EVEN MY REAL DAD!?!"

"of course i am! honey it's just sant-"

"I GOT THE RESULTS BACK DAD. I SENT IN MINE TO COMPARE TO SEE IF IT WAS YOU OR SANTA, BUT YOUR DNA DIDNT MATCH MINE DAD!"

she wont get gifts from santa anymore, but she will get two christmas' from now on! 😭

edit 21 hours later : the police accepted the request for the DNA test. grab the popcorn. for the film rights, i want 10% of the film's profit on top of 50k upfront. the world needs this story, streaming services. have your people call my people.

Easy: Santa is illusive. You teach that DNA tests require a sample to match it to, so they'll hold onto her request, but unfortunately have to wait until they aquire a sample from Santa to match it to.

Now if she gets wise and says "ok, try to match it to a sample from my dad," that could get a bit trickier

I find high intelligence and mental health or similar issues are two sides of the same coin.

Plot twist: She knows her dad is a serial killer, but also knows nobody will believe her - this is her way of turning him in by getting his DNA on file.

Young Sheldon just got a new episode concept.

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This comment was an unexpected rollercoaster ride.

Well, Santa doesn't believe in you either!

Lol, it’s ok, they just need to tell her the truth: the police don’t have the resources to DNA test for low level offenses. Harsh does of reality right there. 😂

That's true in movies, less so in real life. People with low intelligence have the same amount of mental health issues as people with high intelligence. But they're less likely to understand their own issues and less likely to have the financial resources to get treatment for them.

Take that, Virginia! You just didn't have the tools.

Of course it's going to be a bit traumatic, Santa is an incarnation of the perfect father who isn't around to make mistakes.

He's the closest thing most children have to worshipping an actual deity and not just paying lip service. Santa gives presents, not vague promises of salvation, and these presents actually show up!

That's actually not true. Higher intelligence is correlated with anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. That doesn't mean it's always the case, but the more intelligent one is the more likely they are to have those mental health problems.

>you probably shouldn't still believe in Santa

Not exactly. There's plenty of brilliant people that believes in silly things or are just ignorant in another area

A very notable example would be those with Nobel Disease (basically Nobel Prize winners with strange or bad ideas later in life)

Santa isn't black.

To have them diagnosed, or to have them?

Next update on this story in r/nottheonion

9 Years Later, Girl That Asked for DNA Test of Cookie, Sues Cumberland Police Department for Falsifying Evidence

If she was my daughter I’d be proud either way

well, I doubt this is a proper DNA sample, but bad sample could give the sex of the DNA. A good one could give some of the heritage.

She also collected DNA from a carrot. I doubt the police could identify the DNA as belonging to a reindeer, but someone else could.

Probably both. That being said, life circumstances as a child still have way more to do with it than intelligence. There are a lot of relevant factors, and they all affect each other, so it's really better to assess cases individually.

For my kids, the gifts that Santa brings are few, non-expensive, and unwrapped. Helps level the playing field.

Mom and Dad buy the other stuff, wrap it, and gift it.

Basically "I was right about this one thing, so I must be right about everything!"

Tell her that you need more than a little saliva to get a DNA sample. Also Santa's DNA would have to already be in the system. It was a good try, but it simply wouldn't work.

Innocence is still a thing

Plenty of kids are incredibly smart, but still innocent kids

Looks fake. The writing pattern shows repeated instances of cursive that come out with muscle memory and are then intentionally suppressed.

What I want to know is if it's attention seeking parents or just lame cops with nothing of legitimate interest to share on social media.

My kid stooped believeing in Santa but never really announced it. I asked her about it and she said believing in Santa is more fun so thats what she goes with.

Im not entirely sure where she is with the tooth fairy.

I don’t think she’s gonna think about it so deep to not trust the police

Regardless, 8 is as good a time as any to start teach kids that you shouldn’t trust authority figures 100% of the time

It tastes way different from when my dad and uncles circle jerk on cookies

My brother did this but because he thought he wouldn’t get gifts if he said he knew lol

I still pretend when asked, just in case

I’m 29

My partner is really intense about "keeping the magic alive" with Santa and the Tooth Faery and such. I get putting the suggestion out there, but I feel like it should always have a hint of "maybe it's not really real". But, I grew up never really having a serious belief in any of it. I actually appreciated that the gifts came from my parents, as it represented my parents putting a distinct effort for me and my siblings.

They're using the "maaaaaaaaaaybe...stay tuned!" tactic

>The Cumberland Police Department responded to the young girl with "some already uncovered evidence in support of Santa Claus' presence in her neighborhood" on Christmas Eve, a photo of what appeared to be a deer with antlers. The Cumberland Police Department said it is awaiting test results, and asked residents to stay tuned for more information.

The Santa my mom was kissing definitely was.

Does santa have a DNA sample on file?

Instead they showed up at her house, arrested her for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and then shot her dog.

The only way to play this is for the police department to say they don’t have DNA samples of Santa Claus so they can’t do a match.

This is the only sensible reply. Why would anyone have DNA samples of Santa Claus unless he was convicted of a crime?

We told our child Santa is make believe right away. He doesn’t seem to be complaining.

I think that if a child is having significant doubts, then you tell them the truth. Otherwise, you risk them not trusting you. I don't think that it will ruin their childhood and if they're already doubting, that magical time of just believing in santa is already gone.

I thought similarly. I thought that the gifts from Santa were extra and I'd get less if I admitted it. Of course, it didn't work this way, there was a budget, but I didn't know that.

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The only correct answer is that there is a little bit of Santa Claus in all of us.

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They'll get right on it, prioritizing it over the thousands of rape kits in storage.