The problem wasn’t a lack of experience with hanging holiday lights, mind you. Through the years, I’ve successfully hung lights on a wide variety of items living and dead, including: Christmas trees, shrubs and hedges, a fake ficus tree, shelving and furniture, and an un-hung screen door that served as a surrogate tree the year my wife and I started dating.
What was so intimidating about this particular holiday project was that I’d never hung lights on the outside of a house before. Along with the risks and challenges of a guy with a fragile sense of balance standing high atop a low-budget ladder, there’s the issue of how to attach the lights to the house in a fashion that will keep them hanging after you let go. Which, when you think about it, is really the most important part of light hanging.
I knew enough about hanging things outdoors to realize that scotch tape wasn’t a viable option. Too bad, considering how strong my qualifications were to operate a tape dispenser as compared to say, a staple gun. Actually, anything gun-like was beyond my capabilities, with the possible exception of a small, child-safe water pistol.
Then, in my hour of need, a solution appeared. While driving through the neighborhood the day before “the hanging,” I spotted a homeowner in the process of putting up icicle lights. The ones he already had up were staying up and the ones he had left he was placing with great precision and ease onto plastic hooks positioned along his fascia trim under the roof.
Needless to say, I viewed this man with the awe one might confer on a great trapeze artist who juggles flaming torches while blindfolded swinging high above the ground. I needed to be him -- a master of airborne electrical stunts. I needed to pay my homage to him and reveal myself as a seeker of the sacred wisdom of the mystic lights. Mostly, I needed to get out of my car and say something before he finished and went inside for the night.
“Excuse me for being nosey,” I said in my best hey neighbor voice. “But I’m hanging my lights tomorrow and I wondered what you’re using to put them up with.”
He looked warily over his shoulder from his roost on the ladder. “I got a bunch of these plastic hooks,” he said.
“Plastic hooks,” I marveled. “No messy scotch tape, no deadly staple gun mishaps.”
“Right,” he responded in the tentative way people agree with you when they’re not sure if you’re all there. “What can I do for you?”
“I’d like to buy your house, fully decorated for the holidays,” I ventured.
“It’s not for sale,” he countered cunningly.
“In that case, may I ask where you got the hooks?”
“You can have these,” he offered, extending a zip lock bag full of the labor-saving wonders.
“I don’t want to deplete your supply.”
“Don’t worry,” he assured me, pointing to two other bags filled to the brim. “I overestimated how much I’d need.”
Now you would think that with such a pivotal break in the dreaded light hanging project coming my way, I would be home free, a guaranteed success story – “Local Boy Lights Up the Season of Joy.” You obviously don’t know me very well.
The next day, after systematically affixing dozens of plastic hooks to the fascia trim of my home, I proceeded to hang 55 feet of General Electric commercial grade icicle lights. It was hard, methodical, tedious labor, but a couple of hours later, I stood back to admire my handiwork: A veritable festival of lights, perfectly proportioned and evenly distributed for maximum dazzle. I grinned elfishly.
All that was left to do was run the extension cord out the garage and plug it into the last strand of lights hanging near the garage door. My spirits soared as I poised to make the connection that would turn the magic on full-tilt. Unfortunately, the plug end of all the lights was on the other side of the house due to my having put them all up in the opposite sequence of what I needed to be able to connect them to the power source. Which leads me to a heartwarming little holiday riddle.
Question: How many Alan Williamsons does it take to hang icicle lights on a house?
Answer: Two. The cheerful, whistle-while-you-work AW that puts them up and the aggravated, despondent AW that takes them down and starts all over because of a bonehead mistake of colossal idiocy.
On the bright side, at least I didn’t wound myself in a tragic staple gun mishap.
On the bright side, at least you got a great story out of it! (Pun intended.)
ReplyDeleteHilarious, Alan. Thanks much.
ReplyDelete