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Executive Summary
The Christmas tree fiasco…
By Don Eminizer
The crisp air nipped at me with its little cloudy tufts of
breath dangling and darting at my face. It stung. I stared at the Christmas
tree. I hated the Christmas tree. It was barren in splotches and crooked. The
hand painted sign that stood next to it was such a cliché that it nauseated me
violently. 'XMAS trees $25 and UP!' It read in crooked red dripping lines.
I wanted to leave but my kids danced around the ugly little naked fur tree like
they had captured it and wanted to drag it back to the cave and cook it over an
open spit triumphantly. "Oooooooooheeee---
canwe-canwe-canwe-canwe--DAD!"
I looked at the little girl in the mittens. Of course they had a little girl
sell Christmas trees and of course she wore mittens. She probably wore mittens
in the middle of July. They had a little girl sell trees so there was
absolutely no way anyone could be forced to help you get the thing in the car.
It was a hideous little racket, this Christmas tree business.
"How much?" I asked.
"That one's forty-five dollars, mister."
Of course it was.
My wife was to blame for this. Actually, I think she might be the one to blame
for everything else, too, but she was definitely to blame for this. Twelve
years of marriage, good years, I thought, thrown down the tubes. All those
years we had that lovely little metal tree that was easy to take out, easy to
put up, easy to take down and put away, but no. New house. New tree.
I settled up with the little Hitler youth in mittens and wrestled the tree onto
the hood of the car. I rolled it onto the roof, it rolled off. I cussed. It
laid there. The kids laughed, thinking Daddy was making a silly Christmas play.
I bungeed the thing onto the roof trying to find places to put all the hooks,
there were hooks everywhere from my radio antenna to my steering wheel to one
of my kid’s seat belts. We got a whole half mile before it flew off the roof
the first time. By the third time it flew off I'd had enough. I forced that
little nightmare into the trunk and bungeed it down and drove twelve miles an
hour all the way home getting cussed out by everybody in town.
I got it into the house looking like a porcupine with a rash. Clearly the tree
had won this bout. My wife asked me to straighten the tree and I laughed at her
heartily and sat down
and watched SportCenter. They decorated it, her and the
other little hunter-gatherers. At the end, they stood there beaming at it
proudly as if they'd done something. I was the one with permanent scars.
My wife climbed beneath the tree to plug in the lights.
"Owww." She shrieked, wriggling out from beneath the tree. She pulled
a pine needle from her cheek. "It BIT me!" She cried.
Maybe there was some Christmas magic left after all!
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