It started slowly in my neighbourhood. Then more and more neighbours joined in. It seemed a bit early to me, and before I knew it, I was left behind. My neighbours started commenting. I was conspicuous by my absence.
I hadn’t put up my Christmas lights yet.
My street gets quite lit up during the holidays. We don’t have any of those homes that show up in the paper as a must-see location, but the whole street gets lit up like a nighttime Disney parade. Until you get to my house.
I finally dragged out my box of lights and, sure enough, half of the strings don’t work. One lousy burnt-out bulb and the whole works quit. So off to the store to get a new string – LED’s this time. I’m never checking a bulb again.
What’s fun about these lights is they can be adjusted – they flash, they fade, they twinkle, they dance! It was all fun until I realized they also keep me awake at night. Sorry all you fancy settings, I’ll be sticking with the tried and true ‘static’ mode.
I’m lucky, my house has a roof I can walk on to install on the second level. I don’t need a series of ladders and staple guns like Clark Griswold to set up my lights. I’m also fortunate I don’t have to do this in the snow. If that was the case, they’d just stay up all year.
While I’m up stringing my lights, I hear a voice. My neighbour is also on his roof with his lights. He’s much more meticulous than I am. He has clips, all the lights are evenly spaced. His place looks great.
Mine? Well, at least it isn’t dark anymore.
Now, where did I store that tree?
Brad Sherwin, MBA is a long-time resident of South Delta, and has over 30 years’ experience in marketing, public relations’, and business strategy. He teaches post-secondary marketing, coaches hockey goalies and is past president of Deltassist.
