The ladies at lunch are dishing about what else, husbands. Because it’s the holiday season, our conversation turns to men and Christmas lights, which is as charged a conversation as people can have and not get arrested.
(I’ve told my daughters, you can learn all you need to know about a man by the way he handles Christmas lights.) The ladies’ complaints fall into three categories: Husbands who won’t put up outdoor lights, or who put them up but badly, or who go completely over the rooftop and turn the house into something like the Griswold House in the movie “Christmas Vacation.” Which just further proves, there is no pleasing women. I’m in the first group.
I could put 20 bikini-clad cheerleaders on the roof, and Dan would still rather watch football than scale the eaves to make the season bright. “I oppose any life-risking behavior on principle,” he says. In the second camp are women whose husbands do a lousy light job. “You can always tell a house that has lights done professionally,” one lady laments. “They’re straight — unlike ours.” But the Dim Bulb Award goes to Jo Ann’s husband.
He was on a mission to get red and green Christmas lights, she told us. When he couldn’t find them at the store, a light bulb went off in his head. He took white outdoor lights, removed them from their sockets, spray painted half of them red and the other half green. “Hey, what’s with these lights?” Jo Ann’s son asked that evening. She looked outside and saw red and green drops dripping from the eaves — the paint melting off the bulbs. In the third group are the over-achieving husbands.