All That Glitters

By the time you read this, Christmas will have come and gone. But I’m still in the spirit, especially since I have a Christmas story yet to tell. It’s about family, brotherly love and looking like Liberace in the Ice Capades.

About six days before Christmas, my kid brother, who lives alone just a few houses down from mine, seemed kind of down. I asked what was wrong, and he told me that he didn’t have any Christmas decorations up, so he “wasn’t feelin’ it.”

I told this to my wife and two kids, and they were not going to have it. We all marched down to his house determined to turn his home into a winter wonderland. I knew that he had all kinds of decorations from Christmas past, so it was just a matter of putting them up. We went out and I helped him purchase a tree. Then he bought a bunch of the new LED lights for the front of his house and a huge Christmas wreath shimmering with gold glitter. I think part of the problem was that he wasn’t confident in arranging the display, nor did he have a clue on how to hang the lights or the wreath at the front of his house. This is where I came in. I don’t mean to brag, but I am a total expert on Christmas decorations. It comes from years of trial and error, mostly error, but now I seem to have an eye for it.

My wife and kids decided to work on the lawn displays while I took on hanging the wreath over his garage at the front of the house. He set up a ladder and I made my ascent. A screw was put in to hang the wreath from, and I held the gold circle with both my hands as I placed it on the screw. It kept falling off, so I had to force the wreath on it until it held. Each time I did that, copious amounts of gold glitter fell onto my hair and face. By the time I was done, I looked like the woman coated in gold paint from the James Bond movie Goldfinger. Of course, I didn’t know this, as there was no mirror in which I could see myself.

I decided I was going to Hardware Hawaii to pick up a heavy-duty hook. Before anyone could say anything, I was off. When I got up to the register to pay for the hook, the guy looked at me and said, “Wow brah, you’re really into Christmas!” Since I didn’t know what he was talking about, I replied, “Yeah, I wish I could do this all year ’round.”