Funny Guy Friday... A Christmas Tree Story

    Funny Guy Friday is written each week by my husband, Mark. If you are a fan of A Christmas Story, you'll enjoy this one. So, I married a Funny Guy!
     Christmas is on its way. Lovely, glorious, beautiful Christmas, upon which the entire kid year revolves. Like every family, we have our Christmas traditions. One of my personal favorites is when we go to purchase our Christmas tree. There is a local nursery that we frequent in the summer, and we have gotten to know the owners pretty well. We go early, so we don't miss all the good trees.
     The nursery is right around the corner from our home. Every year they have a huge fire pit which makes me, and I am sure, every other man, envious. They serve cookies and hot apple cider brewed with a secret ingredient---red hots (I guess it is not really secret in the sense that nobody knows about it...but secret in the sense that it is different.)
     Every year, we traipse on up to that nursery, and every year Cheryl and the kids eat cookies and drink cider. Then they sit around the fire and talk with the owners. At some point, Matthew and Noah will break away and play hide and seek in the tree lot, and Cheryl and Grace will go into the store and look at wreaths and other decorations.
     If you have been paying attention, you will have noticed that nobody is actually looking for a Christmas tree. That is because I am the only one who actually cares about the tree. Every year, Cheryl and I have a similar dispute about the big purchase:
Cheryl: This year, why don't we just buy a small tree.
Me: We can't, we have hundreds of ornaments and we have a room that is 400 square feet with a cathedral ceiling---the room will eat up a small tree.
Cheryl: But they are so expensive, a small tree would be so cute. (This was a brilliant maneuver in the legendary battle of the tree that will live in the folklore of our little street.)
Me: No. No small trees. You have been saying the same thing for twenty years. The money argument made sense when we didn't have any money, but we are doing fine now.
Cheryl: Okay. I suppose that the next time we want to eat out, we won't... and we can save the money that way.
Me: Sure. You say that every time we make an unnecessary purchase. By the way, do you want Chinese or Italian tonight?
Cheryl: Chinese. Maybe tonight we can introduce the kids to Chinese turkey.  
     So I go through the lot looking for that perfect tree. A Frasier fir, about nine-and-a-half feet tall with no bare spots----I don't want to have to hide one side in the corner. And I don't want one of those trees where all the needles fall off---like them balsams.
     Matthew and Noah may offer some suggestions as they dart in and out from behind the trees, but for the most part, I am on my own. I always pick the one that I want and then offer two or three other "choices" to the rest of the gang. It is then, and only then, that they become fully engaged in the selection process; however, their involvement is a mere formality---the tree that we will buy has already been selected.
     Cheryl always picks out the worst tree among the choices, which usually happens to be the least expensive. I tell her no, and that we are getting the one that I want, after assuring her it will fit in the room.
     Once the fresh cut is made, Cheryl reminds me that we are in a race to get the tree home and get it into water. She tells me this as she is saying her good byes. This takes up to twenty minutes as the sap seals the fresh cut. Heaven forbid we have a blow out on the way home. But if we did, I can change a tire in no time. I had always pictured myself in the pits of the Indianapolis Speedway at the 500. When we do make it home, we unload the tree and then the fun begins---putting up the tree.
     If I have any doubts about buying a big tree, they creep in right as I am putting the tree up in the tree stand. I won't bore you with the details of our tree stand, but it rivals the pyramids in its ingenuity. I was told when I purchased it that it is "the best tree stand on the market and the trees never fall." It may be the best, but in the past, I have proven that the trees will fall.
     About seven years ago, I came downstairs and found the tree lying on our living room floor with water and broken ornaments all over the place. Cheryl came down and calmly asked what had happened. I may have cursed. In fact, I may have said THE word, the big one, the queen mother of dirty words, while answering her question that had a very obvious answer. I also may have demanded that she help.
     I have since heard of people under extreme duress speaking in strange tongues. I became conscious that a steady torrent of obscenities and swearing of all kinds was pouring out of me as I screamed. The details are a bit foggy at this point, but you would think that my tone and my unusually harsh language would have had her leaping to my aid. She leaped alright, back upstairs with the admonishment that she would help only after I calmed down, and that "a lot worse things could have happened."
     As an aside, she always uses that a lot worse things could have happened defense. It is the classic Cheryl block. That deadly phrase honored many times by hundreds of wives is not surmountable by any means known to husband-dom. But Cheryl does not realize that things could get worse. Why, Cheryl knows nothing about creeping marauders burrowing through the snow toward our kitchen where only I stand alone between my tiny huddled family and insensate evil. All alone except for my trusty old Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot, range model air rifle. However, this scenario is a bit unrealistic because I don't own such a weapon as it could......put my eye out. I digress.
     After I cleaned up the mess that year, by myself, I put the tree back up and went off to work. I called Cheryl from my car, and I started out by saying, "About this morning..." She stopped me in mid sentence and said, "About this morning, did you call to apologize?" Well, not exactly to apologize, I called to tell you that I am normal and you are not. It is okay to get mad at things every once in a while. Several irreplaceable ornaments were broken and you... That's about as far as I got before she ended the "make up call."
     Anyway, back to this year's tree. As usual, once we got the tree in the stand, we let it sit for a day as we attempted to adjust it. This is always a painstaking process, as Cheryl is adamant that it be perfectly straight up and down. This requires hours of me manipulating ropes under the tree and sliding from side to side on my back. An inch to the right, now back toward the window, can you move it to the left and toward the center of the room. How does that look from down there? She actually asked me that as I squirmed around under the tree.
     We finally got the tree straight and began to decorate. My mom was over. We were watching White Christmas. And all was good with the world.
     Noah had the bottom sufficiently decorated, and we had put on the last of the candy canes when the worst thing ever happened---the tree came down. Oh, life is like that! Sometimes at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.
     Now, in the past, I have been known to weave a tapestry of obscenities that, as far as we know, still hang in space over Lake Michigan. But I have learned from my mistakes, plus my sainted mother and our kids were in the room with me. I stood there quivering with fury as I tried to come up with a real crusher of a word, but all I could come up with was, "Naddafinga."
     I always say that The Godfather provides a quote for every situation that may come along in life. A Christmas Story is the Christmas version of The Godfather---that movie provides a quote for every situation that may come along during the Christmas season.
     Naddafinga summed up my feelings about our tree.
     After the tree was restored, and the kids were asleep, Cheryl and I sat and admired the tree. She mentioned that it was beautiful. I told her that it is beautiful....but I hate it! Maybe next year she will take my advice, and we will go with a smaller tree.