Choosing a Christmas Tree

All marriages and unions have certain arguments in common; with whose parents are we spending the -fill in the blank- holiday? In whose name do we put the car insurance? Do we want a dog or a cat? And, do we want a real or fake tree?

Younger people and men generally want the real tree. Older people and women, who have to take care of the younger people and men, gravitate towards the fake tree.

“Hey Mom, Dad and I agree, we’re getting a real tree. We’re going to the tree farm and chop it down ourselves, you know, a father- son thing.”
“Fine, fine..... take your father’s heart meds with him. Do you know CPR? Remember - if a father drops in a Christmas Tree forest and no one hears him, do you tie him on top of the car with the tree, or bury him where he falls?”
“Mom, he will be FINE! I’ll chop the tree. He can tie it on the car. I’ll help him.”
“That oughta be rich. You can’t tie the garbage bag ties, we have to get the drawstring ones just for you.”
“Why are you such a Grinch? Why do you hate real trees?”
“I love real trees, I hate that I’m the only one who gets under the tree to water it, and I’m always stuck with taking it down and dragging it half out the door.”
“Yeah - and how come you do that? How come you always jam it in the door halfway? Then Dad has to pull it through and take it to the dump.”
“And where are you while Dad is doing all this, huh? Watching from the window inside the house, drinking hot chocolate?”
“I’d help him it he needed it, he likes to do it himself.”
“Right. All parents prefer to do manual labor ourselves, it helps define the existential borders of our existence.”
“I don’t know what you just said, but you’d have no help at all if you didn’t have Brett and me.”
“What? You don’t help now! Everything is a negotiation. You guys don’t voluntarily do anything.”
“Well, maybe it was the way we were raised? Ever think about that?”
“More often than you know.”
“And Dad and I are tired of the same stupid decorations you put on the tree every year. We’re going to get all new ones.”
“Like hell you are! You’ll come home with fishing lures and little crab nets.”
“It’s better than those lame golden noodles that Brett and me made in First Grade that you insist on embarrassing us with every year. It bad enough that you put them on the tree, but you put them where everyone can see them and then you tell the same stupid story over and over about how there was a snow storm that day and our noodles got wet and that’s why some of the gold paint is missing.”
“It doesn’t matter what kind of tree we put up, the golden noodles go on!”
“Dad’s right! You’re impossible to talk to! You always whine about getting new decorations, and when we offer, just because you can’t pick them out, you don’t want them.”
“I cannot trust people who always look like they dressed in the dark to chose decorations that will coordinate with my color scheme.”
“Okay, just tell me the colors you want and we’ll only pick stuff in those colors, okay?”
“Mauve or a soft plum, sage, buff, and medium blue, but not a cool blue, a warm blue.”
“Pink, green, white, blue.... got it.”
“No, not pink, green, white, blue - mauve or a soft plum, sage, buff, and a medium warm blue. You see, you don’t know colors. Just let me get the decorations, all right?”
“Okay, so we have a deal, we get a real tree and you get to pick out new decorations and we burn the golden noodles.”
“The noodles stay.”
“Okay, the noodles stay, but in the back of the tree.....”
“Okay, Golden Noodles in the back of the tree, and you, your father and brother are responsible to water the tree and it goes out of the house the first weekend after New Years.”
“Tree goes out after the Super Bowl.”
“If the tree stays till the Super Bowl, the noodles go in the front, plus you sit next to your grandmother for at least one hour Christmas Day and talk to her, no watching TV from the corner of your eye, you have to make eye contact and conversation.”
“I was wondering why Dad sent me in to negotiate for a real tree. Guess I’m an amateur compared to you, Mom.”
“Honey, I had you at “Hey Mom”.”