The guy rigging up the lights? My dad. Totally.
Every year, Dad would put a record on our turntable (this was the 80s, people), get all decked out in a WEBN Christmas sweatshirt (complete with sequined frog - WEBN, by the way, is the hard-rock station of Cincinnati. Their mascot is a frog. Cincinnati is a weird place, people. Deal with it), black, paint-splattered sweatpants, and, apparently, a gassy lower intestine. Just as hanging Christmas lights is tradition in most families, farting around the Christmas tree is a time-honored tradition in mine.
First, he'd grumble for a good 45 minutes about how the lights were all tangled, even though every year when he took them down, he spent DAYS wrapping them into the most perfect, tangle-free design he could think of.
As an aside, I have no idea WHERE my OCD comes from.
Then, once it had been ascertained that some offending party had broken into the boxes of decorations just to fuck with his head, a good half hour was spent grilling my mother and myself to determine who the guilty party was. Generally, we blamed it on the dog.
Once this portion of the evening was finished, it was time to commence with the actual light stringing and sniffing of Dad's farts.
I'm really not kidding, folks.
Ten hours later, after the lights and ornaments had been perfectly placed on the tree, with precisely 2 inches of space between each festive item, it was time to plug in the tree.
This was where things got ugly.
The lights? They NEVER worked.
Ever.
You would think a man so brilliant could think to plug in the lights before hanging them.
You'd be wrong.
Every year.
Those fuckers were always burnt out. Always!
This always caused my father to shout a melee of curses at the lights, the maker of said lights, the tree, the forest which spawned the tree, and the store where we purchased all of these accoutrements, all the while John Denver and the Muppets are rockin' out Christmas-style on the turntable.
I burst into giggles. This caused my father to become irate with me, as apparently I've never understood the gravity of the situation, when Christmas lights are twinkling when they should be blinking.
To this day, when any grown man shouts at an inanimate object for not functioning properly, I laugh hyterically.
Men, who are, in fact, running the planet, are the only creatures so easily excited that they will shout at something that can neither respond verbally, nor physically.
And every year this joyous, highly malodorous celebration always ended in one phrase...
"Fine! You're so smart, you put 'em up!"
I mean, you can almost SMELL the nutmeg.
Fa la la la la...
eh, fuck it.
My apologies and a farewell??? - 2005-10-20
It should be Friday somewhere. - 2005-10-03
It's Friday again! - 2005-10-01
Amendment to previous entry... - 2005-09-26
Longer than I intended. It's to tide you over for another week. - 2005-09-23