MY CHRISTMAS TREE
★★★★★ (2 out of 5)
Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing my Christmas tree.
Every year I get a Christmas tree, even though I go to my sister’s place to celebrate. I do it partly because it gives me a weird sense of power to be able to pluck a tree out of the ground, put it in my living room, and slowly tease the life out of it. But mostly I do it for the tradition.
This year I made the mistake of buying my Christmas tree from a stranger who was selling it out of the back of his van. He told me he had accidentally bought two trees and his wife would be mad if he came home with a second. He was in a hurry and the tree was only $50, so I bought it sight unseen.
When I got the tree home and had a chance to look at it more closely, I noticed that it was only the front half of a tree. I’m guessing the tree farmer somehow mistakenly cut the tree in half vertically, and that’s why the guy in the van thought he had two trees. I hope his wife wasn’t too mad at him. It could have happened to anyone.
I’m not greedy, so I don’t need a whole tree. I made do with just the front half and hoped no one would walk around to the other side. I tried setting up some mirrors to create the illusion of an entire tree but that’s a lot harder than it sounds.
Usually I decorate with popcorn, but because my popcorn popper is broken, I had to use just popcorn kernels. Those things are impossible to get a string through, so I simply glued them to the tree. Gluing them individually would take forever, so the quickest method is to mix them in a bowl of Elmer’s glue and then toss the whole thing at the tree. What you gain in speed, you lose in accuracy. Large portions of the wall also became decorated, but I found the blurring of the lines of what was the tree and what wasn’t to be a conceptually fascinating surprise.
All the commotion stirred up the nest of wasps I didn’t know came with the tree. I hid in my pantry until the buzzing noises subsided and then set up some signs such as “LOOK OUT! WASPS!” to remind myself about the wasps. I just can’t get too close to the thing.
It’s an okay tree, but I’ve definitely had better and less dangerous ones.
Please join me next week when I will be reviewing LSD.
