"ARE THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS UP YET, HONEY?"

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AN ELECTRIFYING STORY!

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One December morning about ten years ago, I was sitting at the kitchen table, finishing my cup of coffee and the morning paper, when my wife returned early from her walk in the neighborhood. She rushed into the house, breathless and pale, and very excited, and said, "Honey, Honey, a guy down the street was putting up his Christmas lights around the front of his house and I think he electrocuted himself---he is just hanging there on the wire and not moving, dead-looking, and his ladder has fallen over!"

She talked rapidly saying, "It may be a fake, but we need to be sure! You've got to come---we've got to do something...and fast!"  So, since it was several blocks down the street, we jumped into my pickup and sped off down there. We parked right across the street.

Sure enough she was right. the guy was hanging there on the Christmas lights, in his work coveralls and toboggan cap, apparently as dead as a doornail (whatever that means); I said, "It's got to be a fake, but I'm not sure!" (Being somewhat alarmed myself.) I unwrapped a stick of gum, as stake-out detectives do in movies, and we sat and watched him. That sucker didn't move.

The wife was right! We went over our options. We could run over and pull him down, and thus get electrocuted ourselves---(hey, I don't know how electricity works); we could knock on the door, or we could call 911. Maybe even , luckily, a fireman might  drive by...or a cop! As if! Our options seemed few.

You're thinking, my reader, that any dummy should be able to recognize a dummy. Not so! He really looked real...and "real dead!" Finally, after watching him...for maybe ten minutes, I said, (and permit a dramatic embellishment here), "Well, I'm not touching this with a ten foot pole! Ya' gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run! I'm folding!" "But...but..Honey, what if it is a real guy?"

In my great wisdom, and with regrets, I said: "Well, any way you cut it, he's gone!"

Don't laugh at us please. Think about it. We had no mental point of reference. It wasn't like we got in the car and drove around town each year, checking out all the real/fake hanging-dead-light decorators in town. For crying out loud---this was a first. The homeowner was breaking new humorous/macabre  ground! And we---two reasonably intelligent people---(?)...almost bit.

How many electrocuted Christmas  light decorators have you seen hanging around in your neighborhood lately?

(The picture above, of the annual "hanging decorator," was made yesterday. Note, we feel, upon looking at it, that our neighbor has lost something in his dramatic touch. It is not nearly as real-looking a scene as it was ten years ago. The ladder needs to be tilted more and he perhaps needs to be entangled with the wire more. Maybe we are just a bit more......sophisticated.)

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FROM MIL'S

"MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

BY MIL

12/05/12

Sent from my iPad