An Idiot Girl's Christmas: True Tales from the Top of the Naughty List by Laurie Notaro

Author:Laurie Notaro [Notaro, Laurie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humor & Satire, Nonfiction, United States, Family & Relationships
ISBN: 978-1588365071
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-11-01T05:00:00+00:00

Jingle Hell

We all knew that Frank had way too much time on his hands.

All of the neighbors agreed, perhaps not in a ballot-casted community vote, but at one time or another everyone on the block had taken notice, assessed the situation, and had decided that the ninety-pound man who lived across the street from me had spun madly out of control.

It was far beyond our control, anyway.

The first indication that something was seriously wrong on our street came on Thanksgiving Day several years ago, in the shape of eight full-size plywood reindeer, complete with leather reins and bold, brass jingle bells, all planted firmly in Frank’s yard. Behind them glided a robust, gleaming Santa and his sleigh, which was bigger than any actual car that the neighbors owned.

My neighbor Mike sadly shook his head as he scratched his belly. “That’s a man with trouble in his heart,” he said to me, nodding at the holiday extravaganza across the street. “And trouble in his pants. Somebody in that house needs to get laid.”

I had to agree. We all knew Frank didn’t have any kids and spent almost all of his spare time manicuring his already perfect lawn, which made the rest of the neighbors look really bad, especially because we had all moved into a white trash neighborhood specifically so we could spend our leisure time getting drunk and not installing sprinkler systems. Frank had no right trying to fancy up his yard; he was ruining our street, particularly when my next-door neighbors caught the Fancy Yard Fever from Frank and tried to gussy up their place during Christmas, too. The only problem with their improvement was that they were really poor, so they made all of their decorations out of used, broken things. The most precious of which consisted of a huge five-pointed star made out of silver tinsel, held up on an easel and framed with a circle of tinsel around the outside. In short, they weren’t too bright, since they had inadvertently propped up an enormous, shiny pentagram six feet from my house in a very sorry attempt to outdo Frank.

The next year was even worse. In addition to the Santa setup, Frank presented the street with a miniature Disneyland theme, including a Bambi, Thumper, all seven Dwarfs, and a terribly disfigured Dumbo that looked more like a sow than a circus elephant, which he nailed to the top of the tallest tree in his yard. That was also the year he set up a sound apparatus that blared out the Chipmunks and a twinkle-light system that required the expertise of an architect. It had become horribly apparent to all of us that Frank had redirected most, if not all, of his sexual energy away from his wife and into the direction of a jigsaw and sheets of lumber.

This was confirmed one afternoon when all of the neighbors came out to fake work on their yards so we could watch Frank fight with his wife as they were stringing up the lights and disaster struck.

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