National Lampoons Visits DeWitt, MI

This past weekend, per the "tradition" dictated to me by Mrs. Smitty, it was time to hang the Christmas lights.



That about sums it up.

Now that said, I do not have 25,000 bulbs, as Clark Griswold does. In fact, comparatively, I have very few lights., though we have all sorts of other junk like bows, wreaths, and authentic, tree-bough-like garland.

Normally, I wait until there is several inches of snow on the ground and that driveway is nice and icy before I put the ladder up, defy death, and perch myself on the shingles of my roof for a hair of traction to keep me from plummeting to my broken-limbed demise. This year, God was good and gave me a sunny, 33-degree day with a dry driveway.

Here's the deal: I am absolutely terrified of heights. The measurement from my driveway to the peak of my garage is 20 feet. To the eaves-trough along the front of my house? a whopping fifteen feet. But understand, folks, 15 feet might as well be a one thousand-foot cliff. I have a high-quality ladder that is a sturdy as the frame of a skyscraper, placed firmly on level ground, and I am still terrified.

How did I ever survive the Marines? Willpower and teamwork. When we had to rappel down towers or out of helicopters? I asked the Marine behind me to push me hard enough that I had no choice but to go. Mountain warfsare training? I looke UP the whole time, and knew I couldn't go back down because there were people right behind me. Parachuting? Again, I turned around and screamed "KICK MY PACK HARD!" And kick they would, sadistic motherfuckers. That's how I survived: I was forced to.

So every year since our marriage, the weekend of Thanksgiving, I swallow my fear, stare-down my ladder, and just go. It is important to my wife, and now it's important to my kid(s) too, to have lights on the house. If it's important to them, then far be it for me to let a little debilitating fear get in the way.

I grasp the string of lights in my teeth. I fill my pockets with the little plastic light-holders. I slow my breathing. And rung-by-rung, I climb my mountain. I hug the ladder, I stick a light holder on the string of lights, I hold the ladder with one hand in a death grip, and lean, just a bit, to stick the holder under a shingle on clip it onto the eaves. Repeat, repeat. Descend from my sheer cliff face over sharp rocks and sharks below, move the ladder a few feet, and start over. 5 strings of lights takes me an hour, but it gets done, a step at a time. Shaking, nervous, sweating, swearing, panting, straining, it gets done. It's important to my family.

And then I have a high-gravity beer.

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