Lights Out . . . Christmas!

by Bob Sparrow

I wasn’t really snooping, but as I went out into the garage to pull down the boxes with all my outside Christmas decorations in them and I heard voices. I stopped, leaned forward and listened. Indeed, there were voices coming from the boxes of Christmas decorations. I creeped a little closer and put my ear up to the holiday box.

“OK, you over there, spin around and climb through here; you, twist around a couple of times and do a summersault through here. You over there, back up through this hole and hold hands with her.”

Yes, it was just as I suspected, each year I carefully take down and tie my Christmas lights into a nice roll, label them as to where they came from and place them gently in the box. When I go to get them the following year, they are all knotted up with each other and in complete disarray. How does that happen? I was about to learn; I listened further.

“We need a couple of volunteers again this year; one to climb out of your socket and hide somewhere where he can’t find you. We need a second volunteer to wriggle out of your socket just a little, so you light up when he tests us, but not when he put us up. Walter, I think you were close to the top of the roofline last year, so you’d be a good one to volunteer for that. OK, thanks. Those of you who are close to that label he put on us last year, let’s get that off as soon as possible; if you can put it on another bundle of lights, all the better. Don’t forget, if you feel like you’re going to go out this year, wait until you get up on the house and then go out. And listen up everyone, what happens when one of us goes out? WE ALL GO OUT! That’s right, we’re a team, we need to stick together so he has to test each one of us to find the one that’s actually bad. We’ll also need a volunteer to give one up for the team this year when he lays us out on the driveway, someone needs to roll under his foot and get crushed. You’ll be remembered as a hero to all of us.

Deer-in-a-Box

Meanwhile, in the box next to it, I can hear the lighted reindeer talking to himself, getting ready for ‘his gig’.

“Man, it will be good to get out of this fricking box and get all my pieces put together. . . hopefully correctly this year! How hard is it to put my tail on the other end of my body from my head? I don’t know who I pissed off, but I spend 11 months with my head up my ass in a small box and then I gotta stand out on the front lawn with a smile on my face, freezing my ass off, looking all Christmassy for the next month – no food, no water and my antlers will probably be facing the wrong direction again this year. Wish I could poop all over his lawn; actually I just wish I could poop.  I know I look transparent, but I’m feeling a little blocked up.”

The artificial Christmas tree resides elsewhere in a storage shed. Yes, I lost the battle of ‘real’ tree versus ‘artificial’ tree, last year when my last ‘real’ tree had a small fire that was put out fairly quickly, albeit after a good deal of water settled into the carpet and the walls became a bit ashy. I mentioned to Linda that the fire retardant actually looked like snow on the tree, but she failed to see the humor in that.

As late afternoon brought darkness, I headed out to the street in front of the house to admire my work.  Of course, the highest string of lights on the house was out, but I know just where to look for the culprit.  No, all the lights didn’t all come on at the same time, but that’s an easy fix.  So I’m feeling pretty good until I look at the reindeer and wonder if those antlers are on correctly.  Then I notice something under the reindeer that looks an awful lot like reindeer poop.  No way!  It turned out to be just a leaf, but I thought I noticed a smile on the reindeer’s face.

May all your lights stay bright.