Little did we know what interesting things were happening
back home. Our dog was safely down the street at the dog sitter. But the house
was not safe, because our joke loving neighbor Jason had something up his
sleeve for our return.
Now this is the same Jason that will give you the shirt off
his back and then run to the store to buy you a better one - the friend and
neighbor who helped carry out a Let’s Fix the Worst Hardwood Floors in History
and then Paint the Whole House Surprise after Ernst had his heart attack. But
Jason has a major jokester side, one that caused him to steal our tree once!
Yes, you can steal a tree and he proved it.
Two years ago, before we got back, somehow an Xmas
decoration contraption showed up in Jason’s yard. Picture this: take a wire
tomato cage, turn it upside down, string it with Xmas lights and garlands. Then
plug it in and you have a cone shaped tree-like thing. What is the first thing
he thought of? Putting it on the top of our roof as a welcome home treat for
us.
Great, except we don’t celebrate Christmas and neither do
Jason and Carmen. Some of our neighbors know this. Also, the tree had been made as a school project
by one of the youngsters on our block, a sentimental My Kid Made This type
of project. We still don’t know how it
ended up down the street, it’s not like tomato cages catch a lot of wind.
I got home a day before Ernst did. Sleeping in after a late
arrival, I heard footsteps…on our roof. What in the world? 'Twas Jason, up on
our roof with an extension cord. Was he surprised to see me! The thing was so ugly during day, I just had
to agree to the prank. But when I went to pick Ernst up from the airport and we
came home, that tree was in all its yuletide glory, lit up for the whole block
to see. Ernst took one look at it and said “JASON!" He had learned from the
tree incident.
Then came the embarrassing part. The neighbor approached
Jason and asked why he thought we stole his decoration; it meant a lot to them
and did he think we would give it back? We were the neighborhood Grinches and we
had no part of it. JASON!
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| Our neighbors, Jason and Carmen |
