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CANDLE BURNS
Estimated reading time — 5 minutes
It’s a pretty universally known truth that having rich neighbors sucks.
When I say rich, I mean Jeff Bezos probably sent these guys handwritten birthday cards along with the rest of his billionaire friends. That’s how much money they were sitting on.
But what sucks so much infinitely more than having rich neighbors— orders of magnitude more— is having rich neighbors at Christmastime.
I could attempt to describe the luminous monstrosity that my neighbor’s mansion transformed into during the holidays for entire lifespans, but to save time, just imagine if the song Friday by Rebecca Black gained physical form— incredibly annoying, impossible to ignore, and causing significant pain to all who come in contact. That’s the best analogy I’ve got for the billions of flashing rainbow-colored Christmas lights draped over every foot-high shrub on their expensively landscaped front lawn, along with the gargantuan inflatable Frosty the Snowman, to say nothing of the same 5 Mariah Carey songs they blasted at supersonic levels 24/7. Think permanent retinal and eardrum damage. You get the gist.
Every year— every single year— I had to grit my teeth and live within 200 feet of this crime against humanity. And as if the music, the lights, and the infuriatingly grinning Frosty weren’t enough, the vast jingling eyesore attracted the attention of every middle income citizen with too much free time in a thousand mile radius, which meant that my neighborhood was a tourist destination from mid-December to the end of February. If I had a dollar for every furious platinum-blonde mom of three kids that laid down on her horn when I tried to leave my driveway, I could probably compete financially with the fanatics next door.
I’m not Ebeneezer Scrooge, I promise. I am, however, someone who can’t sleep without pitch blackness— and my new...
It’s a pretty universally known truth that having rich neighbors sucks.
When I say rich, I mean Jeff Bezos probably sent these guys handwritten birthday cards along with the rest of his billionaire friends. That’s how much money they were sitting on.
But what sucks so much infinitely more than having rich neighbors— orders of magnitude more— is having rich neighbors at Christmastime.
I could attempt to describe the luminous monstrosity that my neighbor’s mansion transformed into during the holidays for entire lifespans, but to save time, just imagine if the song Friday by Rebecca Black gained physical form— incredibly annoying, impossible to ignore, and causing significant pain to all who come in contact. That’s the best analogy I’ve got for the billions of flashing rainbow-colored Christmas lights draped over every foot-high shrub on their expensively landscaped front lawn, along with the gargantuan inflatable Frosty the Snowman, to say nothing of the same 5 Mariah Carey songs they blasted at supersonic levels 24/7. Think permanent retinal and eardrum damage. You get the gist.
Every year— every single year— I had to grit my teeth and live within 200 feet of this crime against humanity. And as if the music, the lights, and the infuriatingly grinning Frosty weren’t enough, the vast jingling eyesore attracted the attention of every middle income citizen with too much free time in a thousand mile radius, which meant that my neighborhood was a tourist destination from mid-December to the end of February. If I had a dollar for every furious platinum-blonde mom of three kids that laid down on her horn when I tried to leave my driveway, I could probably compete financially with the fanatics next door.
I’m not Ebeneezer Scrooge, I promise. I am, however, someone who can’t sleep without pitch blackness— and my new...
