Your Humbugness!

(On my way out to drive to the course when "the voice" says...)

“You know, Larry has his lights up …”

There it was. The annual near-accusation of my Scroogeness! Larry has his lights up.

It’s not as though Larry spends hours and hours on a weekend strategically applying his Christmas lights along the ridges of his roof—“With artful intent and hazard risk, he doth dress his home to capture the spirit …”

NO!

His lights are already there. They’ve been there! They reside all year ’round tapping their little twinkle toes until he flips a switch! No fair! He flips a switch and he’s instantly “Mr. Yule”!

Now I get to a climb a ladder with a plastic smile and post-stroke vertigo that has never gone completely absent, so I can be free from hearing: “You know, Larry has his lights up.”

A true neighbor would wait and flip that switch on Christmas Eve. That way it would be too late for his neighbors to react. Nope.

Larry has his lights up.

I know, this happens every year and I should be prepared. How can this be a surprise every year?!

I’ll wave and give him a thumbs-up when I see him outside his lighted castle, raise my eyebrows, and nod in false approval. He’s too nice a man to hate, but sometimes I wish he were a baby harp seal and …

Next year I’ll preempt the “Larry has …” I’ll call him up and say, “Hey Bud, everything okay? I just put my lights up and don’t see yours. I know it’s August, but…”