Once again, Early January Smidge has screwed over Late November
Smidge. Thanks for writing me a note or something, you idiot. I honestly don’t
know what I’m thinking sometimes.
If you have read this column for any length of time, you
know how I feel about Christmas lights. For the uninitiated, here’s a brief summary:
I hate them. And I love them. It’s complicated. I love to see them on my house
when they’re all working. It’s magical. I don’t really mind the chore of
putting them up and taking them down, either. I just despise them more than
anything on the planet when they don’t work. The five-foot section of
uncooperative lights in the middle of the string is my mortal nemesis. “Hate”
doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of my feelings toward non-functional
light strings.
Apparently, for me, owning and operating Christmas lights is
like having a baby. Sure, lights can be expensive and uncooperative like kids, and
some are brilliant and some are not so bright, just like kids, but that’s not
what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way that God doesn’t allow you to
remember anything about what it was really like when you had the newborn, or you’d
never do it again.
It’s only when you have the second kid and you’re going
through all the sleepless nights of crying and wailing - some of it even from
the baby - that you remember what the first one was like. It’s then that you
stare at each other and say, “What were we thinking?” Then you do it a third
time and start to question whether or not you are really truly sane.
Much like the first few months with a newborn, I only have a
foggy memory of my struggle with the lights last year. I seem to recall a few
issues with outages, but when it came time to put them up again this year, they
weren’t there. All I know is when I opened up the plastic tub that was supposed
to contain my icicle lights, there were no icicle lights.
Where are they? I opened up a tub marked “Extra X-mas Lights”
but they weren’t there either. I picked up a random string of old mini lights
and saw the black film on the inside of one of the bulbs and it all came
flooding back to me. The bitter cold January day. The bitterness in my heart.
The ladder. The trash can directly under the ladder receiving the light strings
as they came off the eaves...
It seems I threw out all my old icicle lights last year when
I took them down, and I was either so upset at all the five-foot outages, or so
traumatized by the sheer amount of little incandescent bulbs that had gone
completely black on the inside, never to light up again, that I must have
completely blocked out the incident.
Thanks again for the heads up, Early January Smidge. You can
be a real pain.
Just like with our three boys, I decided to take the lemons life
had handed me and make lemonade. (The boys love to have a lemonade stand when
the neighbors bring us lemons. What did you think I meant?) Late November
Smidge put a smile on his face and declared, “This is the year we will upgrade
to the completely hassle-free LED icicle lights! They don’t burn out.”
Then I realized I was alone in the garage talking to myself,
so I went inside and declared the same thing to my wife.
“Great weekend to buy lights,” she said. “Good call,
Einstein.”
Hmm...
This was, of course, happening this past weekend on the
Saturday after Thanksgiving, which is National Husbands Put up the Christmas
Lights Day.
The Thanksgiving week schedule is as follows:
Pre-Black Friday Sales Wednesday
Thanksgiving Thursday
Black Friday
Put up the Christmas Lights while your Wife goes to the
Black-Friday-All-Weekend-Long Sales Saturday
Leftover Turkey and Football while your Wife Mops up at the Black-Friday-All-Weekend-Long
Sales Sunday
Cyber Monday
Giving Tuesday (and Last Chance for Cyber Monday Deal Extensions
Tuesday)
Look up the Credit Card Balance and Have a Mild Cardiac
Incident Wednesday
There are only two things in the entire known universe not
on sale the weekend after Thanksgiving: Christmas lights and extension cords.
Thankfully, I also needed a new extension cord.
I pried the smoking credit card from my wife’s hand and
headed to my local Home Improvement Warehouse. I knew right where to go, since
the Christmas decorations section has been up since August. With six strings of
amazing LED icicle light technology and one extension cord, I smiled at the
checkout lady, inserted my credit card into the chip reader, then closed my
eyes, stuck my fingers in my ears, and said la-la-la-la-la until the
transaction was complete.
Back to the house I went, impending joy brimming in my heart
at the thought of never having to chase down an icicle light bulb outage again.
LED’s, after all, are magical computer-like technology, or something. Who knows
what they really are, but they don’t burn out like regular light bulbs, so I’m
happy.
Up they go onto the eaves, powered up by the brand new
extension cord, just as dusk is falling on a brisk November evening. Brilliant
electronic artificially bright white light illuminates the front of our house
making all my Christmas wishes come tru... What in the actual hell is that?
Five stinkin’ feet of LED icicle light string, completely
dead, right in the center of the house.
Get the trash can. I quit.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2016 Marc Schmatjen
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