Operation X-mas Tree

The following events are highly confidential. The names of those involved have been obscured to protect their identity. I am risking my own neck by simply divulging this information.

Ms. J— was determined to have an authentic Christmas tree for her apartment, so that's what we set out to find one December afternoon. We had permission to scout out and take a tree from the property to the north, so J—, H—, and I set out to find the perfect Christmas tree.

Most of the trees we found were too tall or too small. The ones that appeared to have a good shape to them, only had a good shape from one particular angle, but with a slight turn looked scrawny and pathetic. We were not about to have any Charlie Brown tree. We needed a good tree.

Good enough maybe for Charlie Brown, but not good enough for us.

After much time scouting, we eventually decided to take the tree we had first examined. It was a bit taller than what J— liked, but it seemed to be the fullest of any of the possible trees we could take.

We had a handsaw, and it was quite a job sawing down the tree. We each took turns, and at about halfway through the trunk, I thought I could hurry along the process by pulling at the tree. I ended up splitting the trunk up th middle almost a foot from where we were cutting (oops!). With some handy saw work, I was able to salvage the tree, with a portion of the bottom of the trunk still split.

Then there was the matter of getting it back to J—'s apartment. We had trekked quite a ways. H— used her skills in Girl Scout knot-tying, and tied the rope we had to the tree, and made the rest into a harness which J— wore "Fiddler on the Roof" Style. She insisted on this since I had done most of the sawing.

H— and J— dragging our coniferous prize!

After getting it back to J—'s we went through several trial-and-error attempts at setting it up. First we determined that the split trunk could not work, so we cut off the split part (the tree was still pretty tall), and tried again. That was just one sentence, but that took much longer in real life than it did to write.

On inspection of the tree, we found it to be lopsided, and prone to tipping over. It seemingly had grown in size since we had cut it down as well. Branches were splayed out unevenly in many directions. The three of us went about with a pruner taking pieces off here and branches off there in the vain attempt of making the tree un-lopsided as well as shapely and beautiful. We kept taking off branches and branches, but it just did not seem to do any good.

Eventually, somehow, we ended up with J— balancing the tree with her feet while laying down (sadly, those pictures did not turn out well). It was at this point that it was decided that our afternoon and effort had been a waste.

Operation X-mas Tree was dead, but we still needed to dispose of the body. So we ditched the tree out back, leaning it against another tree, so that none would be the wiser. Then we swore each other to secrecy that no one must ever know of our failed attempt at Christmas cheer. (For you, dear reader, I have broken that vow... on pain of death, I believe it was.)

So while the ideal of an authentic Christmas tree remains in our hearts, take this story as a cautionary tale that sometimes it might just be easier taking a short cut to holiday bliss...

...but it's not nearly as fun!