“Wow! You’ve done a lot already,” my wife said. “Did you try plugging them in before you put them up?” Blank stare. It was the annual hanging of the outdoor Christmas lights. I don’t go all out. That takes time, effort, and more patience than I care to spend. It’s not that I don’t know outdoor lights. I come from Tampa, by golly, where my Latin brethren are Christmas light junkies, going to such extremes to outdo each other that they often have to be medicated. I didn’t grow up in a Latin neighborhood, but if you wanted to see Christmas lights, you searched one out, following the glow on the horizon until you came upon streets that never knew darkness. And what a sight you would see. They would string thousands and thousands of lights on a single azalea bush, smothering and cooking the poor thing. Transformers would burn out on a weekly basis, and it wasn’t uncommon to see a yard spontaneously combust in a flash. No bother, out would hop the family with boxes of new lights to replace the old, and the whole process would repeat itself. Now, these were not lights like you and I would buy, but industrial-strength bulbs like you find on airport runways. With such equipment, satellites flying overhead were blinded. There were Santas marching across rooftops and manger scenes so large that the baby Jesus looked like a grizzly bear. And from everywhere, multi-colored light streamed across the world! It was … Continue reading When the lights didn’t light