Caution: Tacky
Sitting in my living room this morning, I couldn’t help but feel the most heightened sense of irritation. We are approaching March with quick pace, and, yet, my parents still hadn’t taken down the Christmas tree, despite my constant begging.
Rather than sit back and whine some more (which is what I usually do), I decided to take action. I took off the ornaments, one-by-one, and pulled off the hooks before putting them into a box. The hooks went into a plastic bag; nothing gets under my skin more than little hooks everywhere. I then pulled off the garland, and I attempted to remove the lights. Well, that didn’t work. The lights were just tangled and bunched on the tree. So, I removed the fake limbs, letting the lights fall to the floor. Then, I untangled the lights, boxed them up, and packed them away.
Needless to say, this was WORK.
Imagine my surprise when my stepfather walks in when I’m close to finishing and screams, “Woah, woah, woah!”
“What?” I ask, trying to understand what was wrong.
“Don’t take that down!” he said, still shouting. “We’re going to leave that up until next December.”
Excuse me? We (as in the whole family) had decided (when exactly?) to leave the Christmas tree (which was poised in front of our front door for the whole world to see) until next Christmas (for months and months?). “Oh, no,” I say. “This is coming down.”
The two of us proceeded to argue. “Do you know how much work it’s going to be putting it back up?” he says. “Do you know how much work it was taking it down?” I say. All the while, my mother is not picking sides, but, after he leaves, she says, “I wasn’t going to let it stay up until December.” Thanks, mom.
He then tells me, just to piss me off: “Well, fine. But the front door is still off-limits.” Why? Because he said so. That worked when I was 11, but now I expect… I don’t know… logic?
I don’t know what I’m more pissed about: my hard work (which is something I rarely do) went unappreciated, or my stepfather actually expected to keep that Christmas tree up until next Christmas.
How tacky can you really be?
Well, we are talking about the man who has no qualms about eating food that falls on the floor. Or food that a dog has gotten into. Or food that’s been on top of the garbage.
Sarah
