When Christmas Came Crashing Down
The night was still. My parents were asleep and Moses was on the couch, quietly wrapped up in his tail. The only light in the room came from the moon glowing through the curtains and the luminescence of the Christmas tree. And I was in the mood for a nosh.
I went into the kitchen and poured myself a heaping helping of Cheerios, and as customary, filled the bowl to the brim with milk. It always takes quite the steady hand for me to reach my eating destination without spilling a drop or two of milk. Over the years I have mastered the skill, although when I was little I couldn’t make it a few feet without significant spillage. So, I placed the milk back in the fridge and the cereal back in the cabinet and with a masterfully grip on the bowl, I walked out of the kitchen and through the living room and into the den where we kept the Christmas tree.
Ah, there it stood in the corner in all of its majesty. I stopped and took a moment to enjoy the beauty of the tree and all the wonder and magic it represents. I breathed in deep and then continued on my path.
And that’s when it happened.
That’s when my Christmas tree attacked me.
Oh yeah. As soon as I turned my back on the tree it pounced. I never saw or heard it coming. In a matter of seconds, I was on the floor, faceplanted into the carpet, my Cheerios slung across the floor of the den, milk seeping into the carpet, the Christmas tree on top of me, needles poking me in the neck and white bulbs dangling in front of my face, blinding me. I was obviously a little caught off guard…well, a lot caught off guard. Did some burglar just tackle me? When I realized it was the tree I wondered how the heck it ended up on my back!? Did I somehow trip into it or did it get angry at me for some reason? Perhaps it had been plotting this particular pummeling for a while now. I tried to shout but was too overcome with confusion to say anything like “Help!” or “Mom, Dad, the tree fell on me!” but all I could muster was a “uuuuuhhhhhhh.”
Naturally, Moses was startled but did he come to my rescue? Nope. He went to the bowl and stuck his head inside to lick up the remnants of milk.
Seconds later, my mom and dad popped out of their room, a mixture of confusion and comedy written across their pillow stained faces. Or so they tell me. I couldn’t look up to see their expressions as I was pinned down by the freagin’ Christmas tree! They came to my rescue, laughing all the way. Dad, in nothing but his tighty-whities and looking as pasty white as the runaway milk from my cereal, used his Herculean strength to lift up the tree from on top of me. My mom was so overcome with the giggles that I couldn’t help but join her.
After finding out I was okay, Dad went back to bed while Mom and I spent the next couple of minutes picking Cheerios out of the carpet, all the while fending the cat off from the wet carpet like it was a plutonium spill. It was quite the laughable experience and we never did figure out what happened to the tree to make it fall on top of me. Maybe it just wasn’t secured well enough. Maybe something sinister was behind that tree!
“The Cheerio Incident,” as it came to be called, happened in my early teens but Mom still brings it up every Christmas and it brings up a big chuckle from everyone. Heck, I even bring it up myself because, looking back, it’s funny. I mean, really, who can say they’ve been attacked by their own Christmas tree. Sure, there’s probably been electrocutions due to a faulty set of bulbs, strangulation from getting overzealous with ribbon, limb removal from sawing down trees, and the occasional eye trauma with crushed ornament balls…but those are more a result of human error, no? I can safely say I had no part in the tree’s free fall into my face. And talk about impeccable timing! I mean, geez. How is it that the tree picked that particular moment in time to collapse, right when I happened to be standing near it? If you put a huge gash in the trunk of a tree and waited for it to tip over, you’d never be able to get it to fall like that again in a thousand years!
Ah, good times.
Merry Christmas Everyone!