It was pretty late in the evening when I heard the key in the lock of my front door. A cold gust of wind blew in as Surfer Girl returned from her weekend of wave riding or whatever it is that she does. She came into Stalag 9 took off her coat and said hi.

She asked what I had done on the weekend so I told her that I had been getting set for Christmas, which shocked her to no end.

“I thought you weren’t doing Christmas Steve.” She said to me.

“Well, I wasn’t going to, but I guess I was bored and thought too much and I had a change of heart. You know, listened to some music and I decided to put the tree up. This place needed a little Christmas.”

Surfer Girl is my room-mate, the femme of the futon so to speak. She knows she lives in what is in actual fact a bachelor pad, even if it’s too clean and there are plants and stuff on the patio. So she smiled because she feels about the same way I do about the upcoming lean Christmas. The basic difference between she and I is that she doesn’t have command of my Grinch-like qualities to the same extent that I do.

“So where’s the tree?” she asked.

“It’s right over here.” I said as I plugged the lights in.

Surfer Girl sure can laugh! The very moment she saw it, she cracked up laughing. And then she started crying, and then she was laughing again.

“Oh myyyy God! It’s soooooo ugly!!!!.

It’s PINK Steve! It’s soooo ugly!” and she started crying again, which turned back into laughter and back to crying.

I’ll never understand women if I live to be a thousand years old, which I’ll feel like if Christmas doesn’t get her and leave very soon.

The tree was perched on the end table at one side of the futon she sleeps on. I think she thought that it was cruel to do that to her, but the lamp that had stood there had a burned out bulb that I keep forgetting to buy a replacement for. So I told her that it really wasn’t so bad because at least she has a light on the end table until I remember to buy a new bulb for the lamp.

I tried to soothe her, but I think that the Christmas Music and the pink tree had her overwhelmed a little.

“Where am I living?” she moaned. And then she looked at the tree and she laughed again and then started crying again. “If my family could see how my life has turned out they’d be soooo disappointed.” Followed by more tears and then more chuckling and then more tears.

Finally she temporarily regained her composure and looked at the tree. She saw the Elvis decorations and started laughing again.

And then she saw the one armed angel atop the tree and she started crying again. “That is so sad Steve!

“Not really Surfer Girl,” I told her, “I kinda like it myself. It adds a little color to the joint.”

Well I guess she finally came to grips with the fact that the tree was going to be there for a while, so she quit whining and laughing and crying and went to sleep.

The next day I entered The Triangle after a long hard day of not selling anything. My friend Bob the construction equipment rental guy was standing at the bar as I ordered a cold one.

“How was your day Bob?” I asked him. Well it turned out that he’d had a long hard day of not renting any equipment to anyone, so we were on the same page.

We were talking about things when the subject of Christmas came up. Bob the construction rental guy is an empty nester bachelor guy like me, except he doesn’t have a person sleeping on his futon like I do.

I told him I had put up a tree and he looked over at me and told me that he thought he should probably do the same thing because he has a tree packed away and that his grand kids might come by over the holidays.
“Really? You have a tree!” I said. I’m not sure why I thought that it was odd. Even Big burly guys have Christmas trees I suppose.

“Yeah I do. I bought it a year or two ago at the Drug Store. It’s called a Candy Cane Tree, but it looks more like a pink one than a Candy Cane if you ask me.” He said.

That was when I started laughing.

Then I started crying.

Then I started laughing again.

Surf’s Up!!!! Merry Christmas!!!!!!!!