Watching action movies once you reach your 30s is just a little different.
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My wife, M, and I moved to a suburb in the Midwest in January of 2021. One of the reasons we moved was that there were only so many heart-melting little onesies we could walk by at Target before we had to do something about our childlessness. Stated differently, we decided it was time to start a family and we moved to a city that is known for being a great place to raise kids.
After many years of taking great measures to avoid pregnancy, on December 15 we found out that after several months of trying we were once again sans-baby. As it turns out, at our age pregnancy is not exactly the inevitable danger lurking behind every glance that we were told to fear in our youth.
We were a bit down about the news and decided that a mental health pasta dinner might help. So, we went to the store to get ingredients to make the al dente hugs from the inside that our souls needed.
You are probably asking yourself “why would 75% off of some little Christmas trees be a ‘Christmas miracle’ 10 days before Christmas?” Long story short: the answer is “Buy Nothing groups.” However, that answer provides you with almost nothing to understand why M believed that this was a Christmas miracle. That is because a truly long story can’t be told quickly. A short story, however, can be drawn out for a criminally long time. That is why the nonsense phrase “long story short” usually follows the telling of a boring, tangent-filled, narrative that doesn’t appear to be leading to any sort of a conclusion. “Long story short” is a storyteller’s shorthand for “I just realized that I have been talking for what must seem like an eternity to you and I am offering you this empty promise that I am going to skip the irrelevant side-quests and stick with the main story-line from now on.”
As I was saying (which is admittedly the early-in-the-story relative of “long story short”), the reason that a 75% discount on small Christmas trees seemed like a Christmas miracle to M was that there are these things called “Buy Nothing” groups on social media where people post things for free to reduce waste, help others, and build relationships in their local community. Why send something to the landfill if you can build a relationship with someone else who is looking for that thing and is willing to come pick it up? Then, maybe when you need something, someone else will be giving it away for free.
Sometime in mid-November, someone posted a free fake Christmas tree on our local Buy Nothing group on Facebook. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get that sweet, sweet free tree because someone else said that they wanted it and could pick it up first, but we became convinced that we could get a free fake tree that we could store and enjoy for many years to come. What could possibly say “Merry Christmas!” better than a physically imposing monument to our seasonally ironic cheapness occupying most of our living room?
Here we were on December 15 and although we had decorated the outside of our house with the decorations we had accumulated over the years, this is what we saw every time we walked through our front door:
We were getting less-and-less confident we would be able to find a tree in a Buy Nothing group before Christmas. 75% off a cheap small tree with plenty of time to decorate and enjoy it seemed like a result that was as close as we were going to get to a Buy Nothing conquest. M knew it. I knew it. We were instantly on the same page.
When we got closer to the small trees, we were confused. The sign appeared to say that even though the trees were 75% off, they were still going to be $20.00. It didn’t make any sense that 3 foot trees were originally $80.00. We were starting to think that this was a disappointing scam when we read the fine print on the sign and realized that these trees weren’t actually the trees that were on sale. We were excited to realize that, as it turns out, the trees that were actually on sale for 75% off were 7-8 foot Noble Firs and that sounded like a pretty solid deal. We looked around the front of the store and found this beautiful lineup:
The trees were separated into two types by a big piece of plywood. There were signs saying that Balsam Firs were on the left and they were $15.00. The Noble Firs were on the right, and they were $20.00. On quick inspection, we couldn’t really tell the difference between the trees in the two groups, so we decided to go with one of the cheaper Balsam Firs for $15.00.
M picked the tree from the Balsam Fir bin while I got the groceries and pulled the car around. We stuffed everything into the back of our SUV and headed home. I grabbed the tree base that we used in the past for the smaller trees that would fit in our old condo. We decided that since I am tall it would be best for me to support the tree and since M is relatively small, it would be best for M to tighten the tree base screws around the trunk.
To most people, a $5 oversight like this would probably not be cause for alarm. However, M and I are the types of people who will let something rupture in our gastrointestinal tract before we unbuckle our seatbelts while the fasten seatbelt sign is active on an airplane. The line between order and anarchy is made exclusively of rules. We will not be agents of chaos.
We decorated the tree and by the time we were done, the stress of our theft had subsided. We were feeling so good that we went about the rest of our evening feeling merry and bright. We even took a picture of our cattle dog, Arya, with our ill-gotten tree.
The next day we went back to the store and found that all of the trees, no matter the type or size, had been reduced to $10.00. We paid $20.00 to replace our broken ornaments and $25.00 for a tree stand that could support the tree we paid $15.00 for, which was now only worth $10.00. We decided to just call it even.
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Remember, if you are feeling all alone this Christmas, Nobody loves you.
