Low Expectations

I was sitting in the dining room, looking at the table festooned with Christmas decorations and the bright red Christmas table cloth. The table was still stretched out with the added leaf in it. From one end to the other there were gravy stains, blotches of powdered sugar, crumbs, and other detritus left over from Christmas Eve and each dinner since then. I suddenly felt like Miss Havisham sitting at her wedding table, years after being jilted. 'This crap has got to go' I said to myself. After all, it was January fourth and I was sick of the holidays. So that's what I did on Saturday, I finally got Christmas out of my dining room. On Sunday Mark worked on dismantling the tree in the living room. Because of his disability, Mark can only remove the low hanging ornaments from the tree. I had offered to take them all off, but was rebuffed.

"No, you break everything you touch. I'll do it somehow."

Mark has some pretty fancy ornaments, expensive ones that I am not allowed to touch. However, Mark could not stand and get all of them off the tree, so I was called into duty with explicit instructions.

"Do not break any of my ornaments. I repeat, do not break any of them. Carefully remove each one slowly, and hand them down to me."

Mark sat next to the big box with all the packing material, and I followed his instructions as best I could. What I hadn't realized is that Mark had taken the wire ornament hangers and twist tied each ornament to the branches, and not in a easy to remove way. I couldn't just untwist each one and remove them. No, they were twisted in different directions. Some were tied in knots. All of them were ripping the skin from my finger tips as I tried to gently, and carefully remove Mark's beloved baubles. I did a pretty good job until I got to one that was really snarled around a branch. I turned the wire hanger one way, and then the other. I pulled with one hand and with my bloody fingers tried to twist the hanger the other way. With a snap that sounded like a small mouse trap, the top of the ornament, the part that the wire hook attaches to, popped out of the delicate glass. In slow motion the ornament flew in an arc past my fingertips and smashed onto the floor.

"Ahhhh.... You asshole.... You did that on purpose. You broke that on purpose.... Waaaaa..... Was that one of my Broadway ornaments? Waaaa... I hate you."

The wailing and crying continued as the dogs and I quickly moved away from the crazy man.

"Who the hell twist ties ornaments to the Christmas tree? That broken ornament is your fault, you.... "

"Waaaaa..... I'm going to kill you....  Waaaa..."