YOU STOLE A CHRISTMAS LIGHT? A CHRISTMAS LIGHT?

            Remember last week when I quoted good ol’ Kin Hubbard about how the Christmas Spirit packs up and leaves town quicker than a circus? Guess what? Our house just experienced first-hand evidence of that very thing and it was right in our own front yard, too.
            You see, Deb, being the Christmas light lover in the house, went out and bought one of the latest laser projection lights and installed it to shine on the front of our house which sits merely inches, (or centimeters if you insist), off of the town sidewalk on Main Street. The light had to be situated very close to the sidewalk in order to shine on the house correctly. With meticulous care Deb set the thing up and was proud as punch when it worked and sparkled up the house quite nicely.
             Because of the light’s proximity to the sidewalk I asked Deb if she thought someone might walk away with the thing as it was sitting right there for anyone to just pluck from the yard and slink away. “A Christmas light?!” she asked incredulously, “Who’d steal a Christmas light?”
             "I don’t know. I hope no one will take it,” says I, “But you never know. It’s just sitting right there.” Famous last words, eh?
             So, just like the Christmas Spirit…there it was…GONE! Some fool, or fools, took off with our Christmas laser light. Merry Christmas…jerks! Thanks a lot! And a Happy New Year to you, too! May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits! You stole a Christmas light! A Christmas light!
              So here’s the thing, folks, if someone else buys something and has it sitting in plain view for everyone to see and its still on their property, regardless of its proximity to the town property, and someone other than the owner decides to permanently remove the item…it is called stealing. It’s the Ten Commandments 101, people. “Thou Shalt Not STEAL”.
            Now, I’m sure everyone has pilfered something at one time or another in their life. You know, change from Mom’s purse, a toy that looked better in your toy box than your cousins, a few smokes out of Dad’s pack, a roll of orange lifesavers off of the counter at Conn McCann’s General Store in Marquis, Saskatchewan in 1966, nothing specific, mind you, but you know what I mean. Still stealing…still a sin…but are there not levels? Hmmmm? Just sayin’.
            My apologies, Dear Reader, here it is not even two weeks into the New Year and I’m starting off on the wrong foot. The Negative Foot. As we cruise into a new year I was hoping that we could start off a lot better than where 2016 left us- untrusting, cynical, scared, selfish, negative…the list goes on. It is early in the year, however, and besides, maybe the thieves grabbed the light while it was still 2016 making it typical of the year just past while hope still remains for 2017. Why don’t we go with that, okay?
     We here at the Hubbard house wish the Christmas light thieves a short wonderful time with our light. With any luck at all it would be nice if the thieves installed the light in front of their house for one Christmas season only to have it stolen by someone else to use the next Christmas season and then someone else could steal it for their house the next year and then on and on it would go so many houses would get to experience the lovely light show which only the Hubbards have paid for. Sound like a plan?
“I don’t know if that’s a year’s bad luck, or if that’s how it works. But stealing a Christmas tree-that can’t be a good thing, karma-wise.” Adrian McKinty, Irish novelist, (1968-).