The Grinch May Have a Point . . .

Okay so I have this friend who lives in a retirement home and she can't get around like she used to. She loves decorating her building for Christmas and, having an hour or so to offer her last week, I dropped by to help out.

She hobbled down to the lobby where she pointed me to a large tree fresh from storage next to a big box of decorations and asked if I'd string lights. Now if you're like me, you could go your entire life without touching another string of Christmas lights and live very happily. Don't get me wrong, I love the holidays, love the look of the decorated tree but honestly? When it comes to putting on the lights the thrill is gone. Gone.

But determined to be helpful I dug into the box where I found the world's largest ball of tangled lights. The kind that, if unstrung, would probably reach from L.A. to New York with stops in Boise, Dallas and Tallahassee. They really ought to have it on display somewhere, it's just going to waste in that box when it could be touring the country as the Eighth Wonder of the Modern World or a tribute to entropy or something. I voted to throw out the whole thing and buy some brand new ones but my frugal friend wouldn't hear of it so I set out to untangle them. Bit by bit.

After what was surely hours--it took less time to invent the light bulb--I got four or five strands pulled out and set aside and it occurred to me that I ought to test them to see if they even worked. Sure enough, only two strands worked but would she let me throw them out? Nope, she hobbled back down to her apartment to get her trusty bag of replacement lights and some pliers. Soon she's got me checking every light on the dumb string, popping them out and back in, testing whether each bulb is fully connected or not. Glory be, one light is loose so I get one of the strands lit but the other string is hopeless. I'm pulling out each light and testing with the new bulbs until I'm reading to curse Thomas Edison and General Electric all in one breath.

I finally gave up and figured we'd go with what we had. Somehow life on earth would have to continue with a tree strung with only four strands of lights. Somehow. By this time it was getting late--I mean Christmas was only ten days away, at this rate I wouldn't have the thing strung up by New Year's. I was worried that I wouldn't have enough time to get the job finished so I thought I ought to start from the top so that if I had to leave at least they could finish the bottom easily--big mistake. In fact, if the whole thing had been on The Amazing Race, this would have been the point where they'd do a slow motion shot with me wiping the sweat from my face to signify that it was a life-altering, crossroad moment that would ultimately decide the fate of the race.

I started wrapping the tree around and around and around, down and down and down, and everything was going fine until I ran out of lights. My friend hobbled back to her apartment v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y to get extras but after two trips sent me up to the third floor for an extra box to finish the job. No stairs to be found, only an elevator that was so slow by the time you got back to the lobby you'd aged two months and forgotten why you went up in the first place. But finally, after an hour, the whole beautiful tree was strung and ready to go. I was ready to let her ooh and aaaah over the lights and I went to plug it in when I realized--to my horror--that I was holding the female end of the lights. I'd strung the whole darn tree backwards and couldn't even plug it in. AAAAGH!!!

All the old people gathered around me, wondering if they should be concerned, as I pounded my forehead against the wall in my anguish. I tried to think of all the creative ways to get around the problem, I tried adding another half-lit string of lights and working around it but no luck. About the time the maintenance man showed up after reports of a crazed, suicidal Christmas elf banging her head repeatedly in the lobby I got the great idea that if I only had an extension cord I could make it work after all.

So Barney, the maintenance man who looked no younger than the tenants he served and somehow managed to shuffle along with both a mop and an oxygen tank, moved with glacial speed to find me an power cord. I figured I'd be collecting social security right alongside my friend by the time he returned but he eventually emerged with a long blue cord. I reached down to do the magic plug-in that would solve my problems only to discover it was a three-prong cord. No good.

More hunting and more head banging and by this time I'm thinking that I'd rather do anything than re-string that whole tree, including but not limited to: walking over broken Christmas bulbs in my bare feet, watching twenty straight hours of Rudolph's Shiny New Year and eating an entire fruitcake washed down with a gallon of over-ripe eggnog. I'm figuring I would rather go home and get my own extension cord if it came to that when someone, somewhere in the building produced an extension cord that I could plug into the top string of lights and stretch down to the outlet.

I plugged it in and stood back to admire my ingenuity. But wouldn't you know it? Two sections were dark. AAAGH! After all that trauma two strings weren't working and I had to go through the whole process of re-testing bulbs to see where the problems were. Once again, I got one string lit but the other wouldn't work no matter what I did. So I was back up to the third floor for an extra box of lights, and unstringing the broken strand and restringing the tree with the new lights. By the time it was over I was ready to douse the pesky conifer with gasoline and strike a match with a maniacal "It's lit now! Buaha ha ha ha ha!"

Of course I did get it finished--with more traditional methods than gasoline though by the time it was done I was ready to run screaming from the building, knocking over little old ladies and oxygen tanks as I went, but I stuck with it and restrung the last section. Then I ran.

I love Christmas.

Technorati tags: Christmas, holidays, Christmas trees