Christmas Craziness

You've been driving around lately haven't you? You've been shopping, right? Then you probably noticed the same discrepancies I've noticed. If you haven't, I'll explain why shopping for a Christmas tree was an adventure on Saturday. An adventure full of the highs and lows of human behaviour.

Home Depot changed their entire tree area and set-up this year, making it far more difficult to buy a tree. And, instead of different height options ranging from 5 to 10 feet as in previous years, they offered only one: the 6-7 foot tree.

Disappointed, but not willing to fight traffic to look for another tree-selling facility, we looked for the tallest tree we could find. We really hit the jackpot when we found an eight-and-a-half foot tree in the deepest, darkest corner of Home Depot's tree lot.

We dragged our tree, caveman-style, to the front where there were two lines, side-by-side. We entered the lengthy tree-bundling line first. We waited patiently for our turn, and once the mesh was installed on our tree, we began dragging it to the back of the long cashier's line.

What a surprise it was when the man next in line to pay nodded to me, and said "jump in."
"Really? But you've been waiting a long time," I said.
"But so have you. Jump in," was his reply.

I graciously thanked him, a man whose Christmas spirit was obviously running high. We paid for our tree, and loaded it into our Cavalier. With the gooey, sappy trunk half an inch from the rearview, and both front seats pulled far forward, I still had to bend the top of the tree to close the trunk.

It was a crazy drive home, as I couldn't see a thing behind us, while Suz called out vehicle proximities on my right.

Here's where the craziness comes into play. Red lights, although a pretty, glowing Christmas colour, are not holiday decorations put up by the city. Neither are the bright red stop signs. These are, in fact, traffic signs designed to control the flow of vehicles. Red still means stop, no matter what the season. Just because it's Christmas, it doesn't mean you are allowed to turn left on reds and disobey stop signs.

Irate motorists honked at each other, drove around each other and I suspect many a bird was flipped. How can some people be so courteous and friendly while shopping, simply to have that joy turn to anger and frustration on the road?

Fifteen minutes later we arrived home safely. I can only hope everybody else did too.