Joys of the Season

So it’s late December, almost Christmas. By now your house is decorated for the season; every roof peak and gutter dripping with bright, blinking lights, your yard a plethora of expensive, inflatable joy. Shortly after Thanksgiving you probably bundled against the crisp air and spent all weekend building your masterpiece. I bet you arranged that herd of reindeer and anchored that blow-up Santa with pride.  And as you worked, did you imagine what everyone would think? How the neighbors would look out from their frosted windows and smile, nodding their heads in approval as they sipped their steaming mugs of cocoa, quietly admiring your spirit of the season?

Don’t bet on it.

Last week I heard a story that was so off-the-chart awesome I had to share.

A guy called in to one of our local radio stations, during their segment called, “Wake Up Call confessions,” and laid out a scene so disturbing it was like Heart of Darkness, the Christmas special.

Apparently his wife has a problem with inflatable Christmas decorations. She thinks they’re a seasonal plague, that they’re cheap-looking and stupid. According to him, she absolutely hates them with the searing white-hot intensity of a thousand angry suns, and every year is forced to deal with a huge display right across the street in their neighbor’s yard. She wakes up every morning to all of it; the puffy Santa, a herd of swaying reindeer, giant snow globes, blow-up snowmen, you name it. If it’s inflatable and has to do with Christmas, their neighbor and his kids have it jammed in their front yard.

This year she decided she had suffered enough. And over the last couple weeks she slowly convinced her husband to deal with it, that if he really loved her he would take care of it. You know, like get the whole lot of them fitted for big inflatable cement shoes or something.

And in no time he found himself nodding, agreeing to her bah-humbug demands. He gave it some thought and came up with a plan.

One day after work he went to the store and came home with a few inflatable decorations of his own. He took care and set them up in his front yard that night, staking them and, I imagine, waved across the street with a smile as evening slowly set and the young neighbor kids played for the last time with their inflatable friends. Did the children see the man’s wife, smiling from inside the window, her eyes gleaming with joy? We may never know.

What we do know, according to the confession, is what happened next. He waited. For two long days he and his wife quietly anticipated revenge, anxiously biding their time.

Finally, the time had come. He set his alarm and woke in the dark of night. He dressed all in black, covered his face with a ski mask and grabbed the biggest butcher knife he could find. He snuck into his own yard, quickly dispatched his newly purchased inflatables and then crept across the street.

With his heart filled with love, making a Merry Christmas for his beloved wife, he stabbed each and every one of his neighbor’s blow up decorations. He slashed in the darkness until they were all dead; nothing but sad and limp pieces of crumpled plastic joy.

Did his wife wake in the middle of the night, alarmed by the empty spot in their bed? Did she then smile, breathing deep and snuggling down into her warm covers, knowing her husband was about the business of their sweet revenge? Again, we may never know.

What we do know is that the very next morning, she wasted no time playing her part. As the husband backed out of the driveway, leaving for work, he saw his wife on the neighbor’s front porch. She was talking to the mother of the young kids, commiserating about the shameful vandalism that had gone on the night before.

As he drove by, he saw his lovely wife point to their own yard and shake her head, indicating they had been victimized too. He smiled. Right about now she would be convincing the woman that big, inflatable decorations like these were just too much of a risk, what with the state of the world these days. And, of course, he knew how convincing she could be.

She would look her neighbor in the eye, her face full of understanding, and say something like, “You never know. It’s a shame, but you just can’t trust people.”

And she would be right.

Pretty sick, huh? I know. You can’t make this stuff up. For the full confession, check out: Confession – Grinch Who Slashed Santa | KDND 107.9 The End