The Captain loves the holidays. No question.
I put up a little tree right in my cube at work. There’s no room in the cube, of course, because I need all that room to put up my hammock and take snoozes (that’s sarcasm…in case you were wondering), but I put it up just the same. I nearly flipped out…strike that…I actually flipped out when I found out that someone knocked over the Christmas tree the first weekend it was up.
Oh, horrors!
I quickly redecorated and commenced with the celebrating.
I’m not new to Christmas catastrophes, though. I have a great artificial tree that I have at home. Looks pretty real, except all the hinges, etc. to set it up. The best part is you can shape the tree and the branches to be exactly the way you like it. In my case, it looks like something out of Dr. Suess. It goes up, jogs to the left then wraps itself back up to the little angel on the top of the tree. She holds a little candle that is attached to the main lights, and just like in real life, the candle flashes on and off with whatever my chasing lights are programmed at.
I hated the tree stand this tree came with so I bought a rotating tree stand. I always loved rotating trees. I still have an old aluminum tree, in stylish silver tinsel, in the basement that rotated. However, you could never put on lights. Or you could–it would just stop spinning eventually. But not these new tree stands. Now, they have little outlets that spin along with the base…so you can go to town. I usually put about 1000 lights on my little 6-1/2 foot tree. (For fun during the holidays, I watch the electric meter spin at a much higher rate of speed than my tree would ever do.)
The first year I had the stand I didn’t realize you have to be a little careful with the placement of the tree. I got all the furniture out of the way naturally, but I like to put my tree right in the window so everyone can see my beautiful ballerina of a tree a-spinnin’ away in the window. So I put the tree where I always do.
That Christmas morning, I came down the steps to see what Santa had brought me, and the entire tree was listing at a 45 degree angle. At first I had no idea what had happened, but as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes I figured it all out. The tree had gotten entangled with the curtains and it had wrapped up the tree in it. It would have fallen over, but it wound pretty tightly. In fact, the sheer curtain kind of looked like some sort of garland there making its way up the tree like a red stripe on a barber pole. I looked at it quizzically and scanned the floor for broken ornaments–and there were none! Only about half a dozen ornaments fell off total, so it was a good lesson learned with little consequence.
Now, this year I had a great Christmas. Stefan bought exactly the right DVD that I told him to. Mom found some nice stylish clothes to give me. Dad supervised. It was great. On Christmas Eve, we went to church and I ran the sound board and didn’t foul anything up…which is like a personal best…and we had a great time with everything.
My car had a flat Christmas Eve morning, but I figure it looked over at where the bike used to be stored and decided to do an impersonation.
No, this Captain Catastrophe occurs on Sunday…Boxing Day, in fact.
Do you know what Boxing Day is? In Britain and Canada, this tradition started as un-decorating your house. Back in days of yore, trees weren’t artificial spinning technological masterpieces and quite big fire hazards by the time Christmas rolled around. Boxing Day was the day to box everything back up and put all this stuff away.
“What a great idea,” I thought to myself. “A day dedicated to avoiding disasters. I could get into this.”
When I woke up on Boxing Day, I sat up and watched the entire room spin. That was kind of scary. I don’t drink, so this was kind of unexpected. What happens is my sinuses sometimes back up so much, my inner ear plays funny little tricks on me. I can’t believe some people actually bring this condition onto themselves by drinking too much. But this isn’t about how Nancy does these little things to people this time of year, so back to the story.
Anyway, the place is spinning and I’m as dizzy as I’ve ever been…and I’ve been on more “Spin and Puke” carnival rides than anyone I’ve ever met. I wasn’t sure I could drive in to church to run the sound board, but then I thought, “It’s like 6:00 in the morning. I’m not calling anyone just because I’m a little dizzy. Most of the time I just sit there anyway.”
And, thus, the rationalization begins.
So, somehow, I get to church without wrapping my car around a tree, which is neat since I’ve done more than enough wrapping the past few days. You know the key to wrapping presents? Low standards. People are only going to look for a second before tearing in, so why bother being perfect. Get out the duct tape (nice wide tape covers the half inch you undercut the paper by) and go to town. I digress. That happens sometimes.
I’m toddling around setting up mikes and I bend down to connect up the microphone. The pocket for the mikes are in the ground. I decide the only way to get the cable in and not fall over is simple…sit Indian style on the floor and snap it in. If I fall over, I can blame being an old guy trying to sit Indian style. My intelligence sometimes just borders on genius, ya’think?
Anyhoot, there I’m sitting when I get a realization. How on earth am I going to get out the monitor?
For those of you not in the “biz,” a monitor is the rather large speaker they put up in front of singers/musicians so they can hear themselves. They are heavy and clumsy. They are heavy enough that you never grab two to balance you out and even when you aren’t dizzy, they can knock you a little off balance.
I decided to follow Nike’s sage advice and “Just do it!” I jerk up this monstrosity, and lumber out of the music room. That’s when I see the ladies. They were setting up for communion and had trays of about 50 little disposable shot glasses with wine in them. All filled to the top.
I read my own stuff and I know this was a problem.
I waited a sec, balancing myself against the door jam, and thought the coast was clear. I turn the corner and there one of them is, full tray in their arms, as we both are looking at the door. I motion to let her go first. She, being some polite church lady, motions for me to go first.
Does she not know it is I, Captain Catastrophe?
I motion again, more vigorously and even verbally suggest she go first. She motions again. This is getting sickening.
Now, before you read the next bit, be advised I was tired, cranky and probably sicker than I had talked myself into believing. So I say, “Ma’am, I’m a little wobbly today. I think it’s better if you go first.” She nods and goes ahead, but I know what she thought: “That guy came drunk to church.”
I get the monitor at long last to where it needs to go and I think, maybe I ought to explain to her I’m not half in the bag. I talked myself out of that, but I did go by the little kitchen there later, looked at all those shot glasses of wine and smiled at the two ladies back there. They smiled back and I just said, real smart alecky, “Set ’em up, ladies. It’s a cold one out there.”
I think that worked, but I’m fairly certain I’m going to hell.
Captain Catastrophe