More Is More And Ho Ho Ho

That's my neighbor's house across the street. I know it's a bad picture, but I'm a bad photographer and people started asking questions after the fifteenth take so I kinda rushed it. Plus, this is only about half of it, and it was hard to get all the lights in the shot because they're synchronized to the music that plays till freaking midnight and some were mid-blink.

This sort of thing used to piss me off. The vacuum-esque shrill of 37 inflatables. The unending chirp of looped MIDI Christmas carols. The obnoxious cram-it-all-in attitude devoid of style or forethought. The—OK, possibly it still pisses me off, but I was trying to make a point here... What was it?... Hell if I know.

Anyway, Merry C—

Oh yeah, I remember. This used to piss me off so much that one day a few years back I'd finally had enough (and probably like seven Coronas), so I walked across the street to have a little chat with my idiot neighbors. I didn't know what I was going to say. I only knew it wasn't going to be pleasant. I ring the doorbell and my neighbor answers and I open my mouth to launch the first volley of sarcasm bombs, but then I stop because I realize for the first time that my neighbor—the guy I see everyday walking up and down his driveway, the asshole who never waives back no matter how many times I waive, who doesn't even acknowledge me—turns out he's blind. He had that spooky white glaze over his eyes which I had seen on elderly people before but this guy was only in his early fifties max. And if that wasn't bad enough his wife comes walking up behind him and turns out she's got the white glaze over one eye and the other one's normal. So now I'm feeling like a lowlife and of course I don't tell them the real reason I came over. I lie and say I just wanted to wish them a Merry Christmas and blah blah blah and we get to chit chatting about this and that and eventually the subject of their Christmas decorations comes up. They ask me what I think and I start to say something polite because they're actually nice people but before I say anything the wife jumps in and tells me they've been putting up these decorations the last three years for their granddaughter who's nine.

Four years ago the two of them were in a really bad car accident. They nearly died. Lost most of their vision, etc. The driver of the car—their son and father of their granddaughter—he didn't make it. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. And it happened on Christmas Eve. So this little girl woke up Christmas morning four years ago at five years old thinking she was going to open presents from Santa but instead finds out Daddy's not coming home anymore. (At this point I'm feeling like a total loser by the way.) Long story short, the granddaughter and daughter-in-law spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my neighbors now and since it's such a traumatic time for all of them but especially the little girl they use all the lights and music and inflatable characters as a way to make it somewhat norm— All right, that's total bullshit. They're not blind and they don't have a granddaughter. They're just obnoxious consumer-trons with a $700 power bill. I don't know where I was going with that.

But I do love them because they give me something to bitch about, and that's the best present of all. Plus they still haven't figured out who keeps egging Frosty in the nads.

Anyway Merry/Happy Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Yule/New Year's/Etc.