Merry Christmas, A Holiday Lights Story
Don't be a grinch!
As we approach Christmas, I feel the need to bring the opposite of holiday cheer: HOA drama!
Sorry, I’m just a contrarian.
Anyway, this happened about a month ago, and it’s simply too funny not to memorialize while changing names to protect the innocent(?). I ended up doing a couple dramatic readings over Thanksgiving. Now, it must be memorialized forever in writing.
To set the stage, we have 2 characters: Katie, who is coordinating with the landscaping crew about setting up Christmas lights at the neighborhood gate, and Janelle who is storing the box of Christmas lights at her house. They get in touch and Janelle asks Katie when she would like to pick them up. Katie then replies a day later and says “they didn’t get installed, did you place them in a different location?”
And this is when the drama amps up, all in front of hundreds of neighbors on the HOA e-mail listserv.
Janelle replies in a new thread entitled “Katie’s Christmas Lights,” which is promptly blasted out to ~200 adults in the neighborhood:
Dear Neighbors,
I'm sorry my life interfered with Katie’s plans to get the Christmas lights up before Thanksgiving.
I didn't realize I had been issued orders and went to work. (Like in an actual building with the people that do the things at a pre-ordained time...)
As soon as I came home, I dragged the box of lights about four inches past my garage. That's as far as I could get it to go.
The wreaths are on my porch.
Bottle of wine and my eternal gratitude to anyone willing to pick them up. Very many please and thank yous!
(I won't suggest where to put them.)
Respectfully,
Janelle
P.S. Is now a good time to mention there are open board seats?
You too could receive delightful correspondence like this! Without even a "please" or "thank you"!
As you may guess, Katie didn’t take too kindly to this.
Well I have several recommendations for where you can stick your attitude and your wine. You took the responsibility of storing the HOA‘s property. If you were any kind of decent human being and member of this community, you would be willing to communicate and figure out how to make things better. You would think communicating with the landscaping company to install the lights would be an easy task for that position. Because there’s negligence in communication with anyone representing us as an association, the landscaping company asked me to help out because I built a great relationship with them during my time as landscaping chair.
You’re disgusting attitude and lack of polite communication is not shocking. It’s my consistent experience with you.
Be better. Do great things. And STFU.
Meanwhile, a few neighbors chime in to try to de-escalate the tension. One, named Joe asks why it was such a big deal to get the lights out? To that, Janelle replies that she “I can’t lift the box, physically unable.”
Then Ted, husband of Katie, decides to weigh in as well:
Come on Janelle,
This all started last week with the landscaper looking for the Christmas stuff to install the decorations as he does every year at this time. He finally reached out to Katie for some help. If you needed help with the box of stuff, all you had to do was ask sometime between last Friday and today. Stop the drama and ridiculous antics. I’m fairly certain you are capable since you spend time with adults in a building away from your house and keyboard.
Now, Ted (and Katie) have some history with the neighborhood, involving a whole other drama around a fence line. Lawyers were involved and everyone had a grand old time. Thus, Matt jumps into the fray with a one line e-mail:
You’re one to talk about drama and antics Ted. I recall your bullshit very well.
Ted didn’t take kindly to this. He replied:
Shut up dickhead. Go drink another beer.
Quickly, Carrie, wife of Matt, jumps into the fray:
Actually, get your facts straight… my husband doesn’t drink, “dickhead”. Nice try though.
And thankfully for all parties, the thread ended there. We’re hoping they finally just agreed to meet on the neighbor playground and settle this like adults, but we can’t know for sure.
So Merry Christmas! May this be a reminder for everyone that it’s just not worth making a scene over the holidays, no matter how much family gets on your nerves. Don’t be a Grinch!