Christmas Conversation with Dad

“Dad. Why do you have to have this stupid aluminum tree? Why can’t you get a real one?”

Dad just held out his hand from under the pile of bent fake branches. “Stop whining and hand me that screwdriver. One of these lights is stuck.”

Yup. My dad was nuts. Certifiable. I discretely unplugged the tree before handing him the tool. He didn’t even have the presence of mind to do that himself before shoving a tool into the ancient string of lights.

“@$)%! the whole thing just went dead!”

“Let’s go get a real tree. One that smells like Christmas.”

“Smell? Christmas smells like your Mama’s cinnamon cookies and hot coffee with lots of Bailey’s. Oh. Here’s the problem. Came unplugged. Hand me that last piece, will ya?”

“Dad. You have been using this tree since, what, 1960? It stinks like a sweaty horse. It’s all bent. And you are going to electrocute yourself if you fix it one more time. Really. I mean it. This is hazardous.”

Dad settled the last mangled heap of dusty tree on top and plugged in the last section.

There was a loud ZZZZzzzzztt! And everything went dark.

I came to first. Everything looked strange. Like little bits of color instead of smooth lines. Like the whole world was a big tapestry. I didn’t see any bits of color that looked like Dad. I started to ask about him, but jerked when I tried to talk.

“Hiccups.” The paramedic laughed. “Common side effect of electric shock. It should pass.”

My vision cleared a bit. I could see Dad was being loaded into an ambulance.

“Dad?” I finally managed to ask.

“He’ll be fine. But that tree? It’s a goner. Good thing there weren’t any presents under it yet or they’d be toast, too.”

I turned to look around. The tree wasn’t the only thing that was toast. Half the front wall of the house was smoldering. And the firemen were spraying water everywhere. Anything that hadn’t burned was now under an ocean.

Just then, mom drove up.

“Tree?” was all she could say.

I nodded.

She sighed. “Looks like we’ll be spending the holidays with you and Hank after all.


This was written in response to a challenge to write a seasonal piece using the following words:
Piece, Screwdriver, Nuts, Ocean, Tapestry, Aluminum, Cinnamon, Coffee, Presence, Presents, Hiccups, Horse