Christmas Lights Part 3

If you haven't read them, click on Part1 and Part 2.

As far as the bad stuff that happened, they were thankfully few and far between, but they played a major role in my decision to give myself a break from the show.

In the first year I had a group of drunk people show up with the radio blasting and the windows open.  I had heard a few loud radios and usually they toned it down after a bit, but when I could hear my neighbor yelling at them to turn it down, I decided to investigate.  They wouldn't listen to reason and said they could listen to it as loud as they wanted.  I didn' t argue with them, just went inside, locked the doors and shut the show off.  After about 15 minutes they got the hint and left.

Then there was the neighborhood teenager in the beat up truck.  This kid really scared me.  He was probably irritated at the traffic I created and having little or no patience, would come barrelling round the corner with his hand pressed constantly on the horn.  He never stopped or slowed down and narrowly missed some car doors.  What scared me the most about this was people would be out of their cars with their little ones, standing in the street watching the show and he would never even slow down.  I tried stopping him a few times, but he ignored me.  I was on my way to talk to him one day and my wife stopped me.  "You're just going to get yourself thrown in jail.  Just leave it alone."  She was right.  I just did my best to warn people about it when I heard his loud exhaust fire up.  Luckily last year he never was an issue.  I believe he was away at school.  Thank God!

The second year was going well and I thought it was going to be uneventful, but as the crowds increased, people's patience decreased and I thought some folks were going to duke it out.  They would get angry because a car's lights were blinding them and they would start yelling, or some car was in the middle of the road and wouldn't let anyone around them.  Somebody even turned a different radio station on and then turned it all the way up.

This was supposed to make people happy not create anger and angst.

Then the software malfunctioned one night while I was at work.  It kept playing the intro over and over again, never moving past it.  I was getting e-mails on my phone at work and then my wife called in a panic. I tried to troubleshoot it with her over the phone, but we couldn't get it worked out so I had her shut it down for the night.  The next day I had 20 to 30 nasty e-mails from people.  I had a hard time NOT writing them back asking for an address so I could send them a refund.  Sheesh!

But the straw that broke the camels back came at the end of the season when I made a huge error disassembling the Mega Tree.  I somehow got the strings of lights all tangled (144 strings to be exact) and I ended up with a giant ball of lights.  I had to throw away almost a $1000.00 worth of lights.  I couldn't afford to replace them.  At that moment it just wasn't worth it to me.  I was so angry at myself I vowed to never do the show again. 

Needless to say, I've had somewhat of a change of heart.  I miss it this year and I've had a few little ones very upset at me.  I'll give it a rest this season and since I haven't sold anything yet, decide over the course of the next year if I want to do it again.  I'm leaning towards yes.  We'll see. 

If you'd like to watch some videos of the show from years past, you can find them here.

Merry Christmas!!

Rich