Too many years I've put up the lights a bit late, did a haphazard job, figured I'd finish later and ended up with an underwhelming display. This year would be different, I promised myself. I'd put up the lights early, do a haphazard job, figure I'll finish later, and end up with an underwhelming display — but ahead of schedule.
What you recall, quite clearly: At the end of the season when you put the lights away — which feels like two months ago — you wound the strands around a plastic drum with care, and stored them in a bin. What you discover: The strands are all jammed in a bin, and over the course of the year they have formed a knot so dense it has the gravitational pull of a black hole, complete with mice trapped eternally at the event horizon.
You have to take them apart to test them. This is delicate work, because the act of disentangling the strands often dislodges a bulb from its socket. As we all know, that ruins the whole string. We recall with a bitter smile the ancient lie:
"One goes out, the rest stay lit."
Really. Here's one that went out. One third of the strand is now dead. Explain that, Mr. Christmas Light Designer.
"Well, two-thirds could be considered the rest. If a train car derails two-thirds of the way down, you'd say the rest of the train made it, wouldn't you?"
"Yes, but that's wrong. Imagine 100 $1 bills, laid on the table. I take one dollar bill, and say you can have 'the rest.' How many bills constitute 'the rest'?"
"Ninety-nine."
"Correct. Now I'm going to burn 33 $1 bills. What's 'the rest' now?"
"Sixty-seven, but that's not a good example, either. First of all, it's illegal to burn U.S. currency. Second, you've modified the deal without my permission."
"How did I do that?"
"Well, you said one dollar bill goes out and I get the rest, and then you made 33 go out."
"Exactly. If the package says 'one strand goes out, the rest stay lit' we'd be good, but it doesn't."
"It doesn't say one bulb, either. 'One' could mean 'one strand.' In which case it's accurate."
Here I am stunned to silence, because I am not used to losing arguments I set up in my own head with the intention of coming out on top. I've been debating fictitious straw men in this column for decades, and I never lose. Look at him: He's smirking.
"Pretty much ruined the ol' annual lights column, eh? You going to pretend this never happened and move along to the part where you find out one strand blew a fuse, and you have to find that tiny little thing in a packet somewhere? The little grain-of-rice-sized glass pill you swear you put in the little chest of drawers where you keep nails and screws?
"You must have set aside 100 packets, and now they're all gone. Oh, I'm sorry, did I just spoil that part of the column? I'm sure you can tell it better than me. Like you did in 2008, 2012, 2015, 2017 and probably 2020, I don't know, I only read your column when my wife puts it in front of me."
So now I've not only lost to the straw man, he's a critic. I wonder if this is a sign of some mental degeneration. The other day, a new study drew a connection between — really — nose-picking and neural disintegration.
As the website sciencealert.com put it: "In cases where picking at your nose damages internal tissues, critical species of bacteria have a clearer path to the brain, which responds to their presence in ways that resemble signs of Alzheimer's disease."
That's one of the reasons I'm not a back-to-nature guy: The world teems with things like bacteria waiting for the chance to go up your nose into your brain and rearrange your sanity.
The article goes on: "There are plenty of caveats here, not least that, so far, the supporting research is based on mice rather than humans."
Well, that's a relief, although I want to know how they trained the mice to pick their noses. I'd also like to know why the bacteria wait for minor nasal trauma, when the eyeball seems an easier entry. They could swim to work.
Also, where are these bacteria coming from? Are we walking around in an invisible miasma of opportunistic bacteria, and after we've surreptitiously done some mining in an itchy nostril, there's bacteria floating around that frankly cannot believe its luck. C'mon, lads, he's diggin' for gold. Last one to the cerebellum is a rotten egg.
Anyway, the whole thing left me so dispirited I put up only half the lights. I'll probably finish the job this weekend. If my wife asks why I'm wearing those disposable earplugs in my nose, I'll just jerk a thumb at the smirking straw man. Ask him.
