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I
realize it’s the season to be jolly and kind to your fellow men,
but this is war. I’m fed up and not going to take it anymore. No
sir, there’s a new day coming…no more Mr. Nice Guy. This is my
final year of being the neighborhood grinch at Christmas. We have
some neighbors down the road who live one of those Martha Stewart
lifestyles wherein he and his wife start getting prepared for this
time of the year about July 5th. I think they start
putting up lights in their trees in August…..The reindeer are
always out by Halloween and the moving, life size Santa is up and
bellowing out …”Ho-Ho-Ho” never later than Thanksgiving. These are
wonderful people. I hate them.
The traffic in front of our house
is non-stop for about three weeks with folks driving by to take
pictures and hanging out of the cars making silly sounds
like…”Ooooh…and Ah.….” all over the place. I hate them as well.
Nothing I can do at this time can compete with these Christmas
obsessed individuals. I suspect they even change out their
furniture with couches covered with Currier and Ives snowy winter
scenes. We just use red and green towels or throw rugs
strategically placed at the back door or on the chairs. Here we
are a couple of weeks before Christmas and we have a total of one
(1) piece of stringy garland wrapped around one pole on our porch.
Oh, yes and we do have a bow on one of the porch lights. This is a
major improvement over last year, when at this time of the month,
we were still trying to figure out what to do with the left over
turkey and dressing soup from Thanksgiving, much less try and
decide how many elves would look appropriate on our front lawn.
These seem like nice, ordinary
folks but isn’t it possible they have too much time on their
hands? I mean, where in God’s name do you find animated sugar plum
fairies? I don’t even know where to look for this stuff. The
second issue I have with major decorations of this sort is what do
you do with them after Christmas? I’ve spent the majority of my
life trying to eliminate having to rent some off site storeroom
and still have room in my garage to park my car. It makes
absolutely no sense at all to me to buy an expensive automobile
and leave it out in the rain, heat and or whatever just so I can
store decorations to stick in my yard several weeks of the year.
This attitude isn’t going to get our yard noticed, is it? I may
have to change my mind about all of this if I want to compete and
have my yard in the running for the coveted ‘Best Yard Decoration
of the Season’ award.
My family pride and good name are
at stake here. I cannot afford to fail. I must persevere and
outshine the competition; it’s the American way. It’s entirely too
late to do anything about this year, but I woke up this morning
and have figured out how I can win for sure next year. Parade
Balloons. That’s right, I got on the web this morning and used a
search engine to find where they get those giant parade float
balloons you see in the Rose Parade and the Macy’s Thanksgiving
parade. Some of them are for sale. All of them are huge. Can you
imagine what kind of attention I can generate with a sixty-five
foot Santa? Or better yet, a hundred foot Nutcracker? Best of all
I can rent these, and not have to store them and look after them
year after year. How great is this? I might just want to look at
other holidays as well. They have a catalog ….How about a
humongous heart for Valentines? I could get a giant leprechaun for
Saint Patrick’s Day. Maybe a giant firecracker for July 4th.
The possibilities are endless. Put some lights on the ground
shining up at those babies and we’ll have something to be proud
of, won’t we?
I can do this…….We will win…..I’ll
keep you posted on our progress. Do you think I need FAA approval
for something as tall as this? I’ll have to check on it. |
