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Each
year the weekend after Thanksgiving, I sense an innate urge to risk
life, limb and public humiliation by festooning the exterior of our
home with several hundred C9 incandescent lights. (I'm still resisting
the whole LED craze-also known as "the Devil's bulbs.")
My mild-mannered next-door neighbor and I always engage in an unspoken
competition to see who can get their Christmas lights up first, but
since I have the holiday sleeping habits of an inebriated grizzly
bear in mid-hibernation, he consistently wins—after which he
undoubtedly enjoys shouting, "Let me know if you need any help up
there," as I cling desperately to the shingles while those little
granules clatter in the aluminum rain gutters-portending my likely
doom.
A couple of years ago, I actually considered hiring a landscaping
company to install my lights for me—and even went so far as to
have them come out to give me an estimate. Once I regained consciousness,
and told them I'd have to sell my plasma and the plasma of my descendants
to third and fourth generations to pay for it, I decided that hiring
out the job would be cheating, anyway.
This year, I was determined to go for the upset and made the unprecedented
play of installing my lights the Saturday before Thanksgiving. My
neighbor had already made a pre-emptive move to take the lead by colorfully
illuminating a front-yard tree. But we both know good and well (at
least I do) that the only lights that really "count" are the house
lights, and this year, I would strike first.
The actual installation was fairly uneventful as my wife, as usual,
held the extension ladder steady and encouraged me not to cry—that
everything would be ok—probably.
Once our lights were up on that first night, they shone forth gloriously,
mocking the pre-Thanksgiving darkness next door. But then, as so often
happens when I'm gloating in the radiance of a self-righteous victory,
disaster struck.
My wife and I were passing our house on our nightly geriatric power-stroll
and noticed, to my dismay, that our Christmas lights were out—even
though I had intentionally left them on to annoy the entire neighborhood.
After a bit of frantic investigating, I discovered that a breaker
had tripped, so I put my vast knowledge of electrical systems to work
and switched it back on, which lasted about half an hour before it
tripped again.
At that point, I proceeded as any skilled technician would. I called
down elaborate curses on electricity in general, unplugged everything
and then plugged it all back in. As I was unplugging an extension
cord from an outlet on one of the eaves of the house, I saw sparks,
a small flame and smoke. Again, my electrical expertise told me that
since I wasn't currently roasting wieners, this might not be a good
thing.
After two trips to a local hardware store and some intense prayer,
I somehow managed to replace the plug without setting the house or
my underwear on fire, but by the time I was finished and got my lights
back on, my neighbor's house was already glowing in full Christmasified
splendor.
Oh, well. My neighbors are incredibly kind people, and there's always
next year. Anybody have some plasma I could borrow? |
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