Sorry if I’m jumping the gun, but I need to talk to you about Christmas lights. Specifically the little ones that you put on Christmas trees. Oh, how I hate them! No matter how carefully you put them away after Christmas, the next year when you take them out of the box, some of them are dead.
And of course Christmas lights are the ultimate lemmings. They are worse than teenagers. If one decides to stop working, all of them stop working. When that happens you are left with two options: 1) Take away their driving privileges, or 2) Get mad and guilt them into working. Oh, wait! I got sidetracked – we were talking about lights, not teenagers. With the lights, you are left with two options: 1) Take out each bulb one-by-one and put a fresh bulb in to see if you found the bulb that was “occupying” the string. 2) Angrily throw the whole thing out and buy a new one. 3) Repeat.
And that is how the Christmas season always began at my house – full of joy and merriment, dead spots on the tree, and the only time of year you can hear things like this:
“No kids, Daddy doesn’t really wish we were Jewish.”
“What can you do to help? Shoot me in the head.”
“If I hear Mannheim Steamroller one more time, I’m feeding the iPod to the dog.”
“If you think you can do it better, be my guest” (Actually, that gets said year-round)
Ah, Christmas magic is in the air…
But then…
My beloved Eternal Companion changed that..forever. With supernal grace and wisdom, she gave me a gift that would bless the lives of our family, and make me a better father, nay.. a better man. And the gift came in a bag. And the bag was from Walgreens. Who woulda thought?
Inside the bag was a wonderful device which has grown to be one of my favorite parts of Christmas. It looks like this:
It is, in fact, a plastic gun. Mind you, it is not just any plastic gun. It is a Christmas Light Repair Gun. Sure, I was skeptical at first, too. It does not make sense, but I bear you my humble testimony that it is true, and effective.
The way it works, is that you take any bulb out of the dead string, and plug the gun into the empty bulb socket. Then you pull the trigger 5 times, and the string lights up. The entire string. Woo-hoo! You then plug the bulb back in, and the string continues to work. Crazy.
It does sound too good to be true. I know, it makes absolutely no sense. But I promise it works – you are going to have to trust me on this one. Where once was darkness and death, there is now light and life! It is so cool, yet a little freaky. I have read the instructions, and understand about the concept of “completing a circuit”, but I don’t think that science can completely explain how this little gun works. But after witnessing its mystical power, I think I know:
It’s magic. Its gotta be.
Then you run into the little problem if it is good “Glinda” magic, or bad “Elphaba” magic. (But then again, at the end of the show they all turn out to be good, right?)
Either way, I don’t know if the magic is good or evil, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m using it. I just want to express my gratitude to the elves that made it, and so does my family.
LDS humorist, Mormon humor
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I broke down and bought LED lights. They work no matter how many are burned out. Yay!!!
3M: You forget that I live in WV, therefore am in a cultural vacuum. Unless it’s on Netflix or at Redbox, I can only dream.
Just got our magic gun last night!
Twinmomwv: SORRY! I didn’t mean to ruin it for you. I function with an 8 year “spoiler” limit. (16 years if you count the book)
However, one of the previous comments disagrees with my interpretation of the ending – so there is still some intrigue left to be had.
(SPOILER ALERT) Also, Rhett and Scarlet don’t end up together, and Bruce WIllis is really dead.
I saw a commercial for this and it looks like a sanity-saver this season.
I have yet to see Wicked. Thank you for spoiling the ending for me.
Christmas tree lights = the bane of my existence this time of year. I have been BEGGING Splenda Daddy for a new pre-lit tree and his frugal, self-reliant, “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” attitude prevents me my indulgence. I am going to boycott by not putting up the tree at all. That’ll show him : )
Ardis: Now the challenge is to refrain from uttering joyful expletives when it works.
30 years? Was Reagan involved?
This device must interfere (by removing motivation) with your ongoing project to develop new non-expletive expletives.
Is this enough to make me put up a tree for the first time in almost 30 years? Naw.
MIndi: What are you? Some kind of Peeping Tom? Creepy.
Now put your soda down and go put the wash in the dryer, the washer is done.
For some reason I am envisioning you and your kids using this gun and each time it makes a string light up you all dance around like excited cavemen banging your chests and cheering….
For clarification: Our tree is a 9ft FAKE tree. (Heresy, I know – kids w/ allergies & asthma) It has approximately 10 gazillion lights on it. 80% functioning, even with magic.)
The tree was pre-lit when we bought it (apparently with those cheapo-single-strand lights.) Every year we cram it back in the box, vowing that next year – we’ll get a new one.)
So, the magic gun comes in handy for us.
Anna: You can order them online.
I want one! I wish we had Walgreen’s over here!
Am I the only person who buys the double strand lights so it doesn’t matter if a light goes out? I have had the same string of lights for 5 years and never changed a bulb and they were still only 5 bucks for the box you all seem perfectly crazy to me lol
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I just bought one on Amazon.com.
=)
I like the visual of the deadbeat light “occupying” the strand. You so cleva! Maybe there is a magic plastic gun at Walgreens for Wallstreet Occupiers?
Btw, I didn’t think Glinda’s superficial magic was good. In the end she didn’t get true joy because she sold herself out and chose the Wizard’s wordily ways. Elphaba got the joy (and the man) because she held fast to her principles and looked beyond appearances.
I am truely enlightened and sufficiently humbled since I hate lights! Perhaps I too canbenefit from this newfangled contraption!
WOW, you knew exactly what we were going through last night. For FHE we hung up (or tried to) the icicle lights, however two sections would work and the middle section would be dark. We ended up throwing away two thirds of our lights.
I just called my EC and had him dig them out of the garbage before the garbage man came. We will try and see if we can revive them.
THANKS!!!
I buy my magic at Walgreens too. It’s called makeup.
We learned years ago the best way to prevent Christmas light malfunction from one year to the next is to never take the lights off the tree in the first place. If it were up to me, I’d just stuff the whole thing– ornaments and all– up the fireplace (ala the Grinch) but I concede to my husband and help him carry it downstairs for a proper hibernation in the storage room. The next year, we haul it back up, fluff the branches a ‘lil and it’s ready to decorate. Can’t remember the last time we had to buy new light strands.
But, you know, your way’s cool too. 🙂
You know, I actually had one of those in my cart last Friday (because up here in Canada it was not Black Friday and therefore somewhat safe to go out into the retail world) but because I couldn’t wrap my head around the concept of HOW it would make the lights work again, I didn’t buy it. I was afraid of paying good money for something that just held empty promises! Good to know that I don’t need to understand the science because it is magic! I’m going to head over to the store again this week and pick one up before everyone else in town hears about it. They only had 3 in stock…I wonder if I am too late?
I suspect there will be a bump in Amazon.com traffic after this post. I just ordered mine. Those bleeping Christmas lights take the jolly right out of us every year.
This could be life-changing.
I’m heading out for one too. My son has already thrown away several sets of lights this year…
Sandy
I am going to go buy one of those! It would have saved me a bunch this year. Thanks for sharing!!