When was the last time someone from another state failed to realize that we New Mexicans also live in a state? No doubt at least once you’ve been asked what the rate of exchange is for pesos and real dollars, or whether one needs a passport to enter the borders of this untamed land.

My family has traveled quite a bit, having visited all continuous states except North Dakota and Maine. If we stay anywhere long enough, we’re invariably asked, “How far is Las Vegas from Mexico City?” Once, when I lived in Illinois, I explained that the city we were in, Aurora, was CLOSER to the Mexican capital than was Las Vegas.

A few years later there had appeared a letter to the original Dear Abby. It was around this time of year that a mother wrote Dear Abby a letter explaining that upon her young daughter’s visit with a department-store Santa, the jolly old man asked her what city and town she came from. The girl told Santa she had been born in Virginia.

Thereupon, the letter writer continued, Santa scratched his beard, looked puzzled and explained that there is no Virginia. And in my experience (and maybe yours), some people disregard the compass points to states: North, South and West don’t exist, or at least they’re thought to be part of the adjoining state.

Dear Abby apparently failed to take the bait. She wrote that that particular Santa must be uninformed and geographically challenged, as “any school kid knows there’s a Virginia.”

As I read on, I hoped that Abby would have caught on. Just as there’s a famous letter published in The New York Sun in 1897, called “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” why can’t the reserve be true? Clearly the department store Santa was trying to feed the little girl a cue for her to answer, “Yes, Santa, there is a Virginia.”

I suspect the little girl’s mother sensed what Santa’s proxy was up to and submitted her letter to the editor as a discussion started. But Dear Abby missed point.

The response that appeared in the New York newspaper 117 years ago comes from an editorial writer who probably surmised the girl’s classmates had made fun of her for believing in Santa.

It’s a moving letter, one that we often discussed in season, back in the days when I taught school. I hope to read it to Ellen Vestergaard, my 5-year-old Danish granddaughter this Christmas season.

• • •

You know Dasher, Dancer, Comet and Cupid and all the rest. And you may recall Rudolph, the red-notes reindeer (and that’s sometimes rendered as Rudolph, the Red, knows rain, dear”).

Do you also recall the TENTH reindeer. Now who is that?

Going through this year’s Letters to Santa, which appear in the Optic, we find numerous requests for Christmas gifts and also references to Rudolph, usually in the sense of leaving a treat for the quadruped with the iridescent probiscus, along with the customary stash of cookies and milk for Santa.

So, what are kids in Las Vegas asking of Santa Claus? There are some requests:

• Estevan would like a Wii, Xbox, Legos, a pool table and a tractor with a bucket;
• Amarie wants an iPhone5, boots, jewelry, a family game, socks and assorted other gifts;
• Xavier Isaias wants an air hog roller copter, a Peyton Manning jersey and a fathead poster of the same quarterback;
• Destiny would like a dog and a laptop;
• And Jose Juan asks for a tablet.

Obviously the COMPLETE list of supplications appears in the six-page supplement to this newspaper, so there’s no need to provide too much detail.

And judging from the number of kids leaving cookies and milk for the jolly old fat man, we expect Santa to go into a caloric overload.

Things like X-boxes are common requests this year. I also have beside me a host of letters written in 1980. For example, Johnny Pino asked for a BB gun and “to get the American hostages free.”

Yvonne Lucero asked for a mini-wave oven, a 10-speed bicycle, a disco dance jukebox photograph and an electric piano.

A 10-year-old girl named Angela wants a tape recorder.

Sheila Ann Ludi made no request, but said, “I will leave you some cookies and coffee by the fireplace.”

Perry Montoya wrote, “Since toys cost a lot of money, I’m just asking for three things: I want a football, a BB gun and a bike.”

Roland Berged asked for a mini-bike, a set of walkie-talkies and a watch.”

Adam Crespin asked for a racing car that jumps ramps.

Matthew Griego would like a bike and a criss-cross racer.

Christina Martinez, who promises to leave milk and cookies by the fireplace, requests a sewing machine.

Josette Flores, who closed with, “I love you, Santa,” requested roller skates and two coloring books.

Thirty-five years ago, a tablet, requested by a girl in 1980, would have had the red image of Big Chief on the cover. Today, a tablet is an electronic device, a computer without a keyboard. or something you take in case of a headache.

Now let’s peer back 80 years, around the time that today’s great-grandparents wrote to Santa. These are common requests:

Catherine Brown wants a doll buggy, candy and a big doll; Jimmy Montoya asked for a sheepskin coat, a pair of gloves and overshoes to go to school.

Frank Duran wrote for a two-wheel bike, a small truck, a streamline wagon, a sled, candy, nuts, oranges, a cap and a jacket.

Mary Louise Montoya wants a baby doll that will cry and shut her eyes. Phillip Brown asks for a train, a pair of stockings, a pair of shoes, a big piano “so I can take lessons from Miss Kohn.”

Was it the economy that made for tough times that required youngsters to request needed, practical items, mainly clothes and shoes?

It seems that we’re much more affluent today than were members of our ancestors’ generation.