surrealization.com

Always dispose of your Christmas trees in a timely manner (aka, We'll miss you Slanty)

Wednesday, January 14 2004

My Christmas tree (from now on will be referred to as "Slanty") pretty much never drank from its little pool of water. Its first night it fell over and the bottom dried all up and it was never able to really get anything from its now defunct water sucking base. Christmas came, Christmas went. New Years came, New Years went. Natasha left to spend a week with her mother, Natasha came back. It is now January 13th, roughly 4 weeks after Slanty came into my apartment and died and I am just now cleaning up its remnants (well Natasha is doing the finishing touches).

We decided today would be the day to do it since Wednesday morning is trash day. We bought this enormous bag to fit over the tree when we were done with it. We had put it under the tree in the first place so we could just pull it up and over and take the tree out. Mind you, Slanty was about 6 1/2 feet tall, 7 feet tall with its base. Well unfortunately Slanty had become very brittle and the bag wouldn't just pull up over the tree - maybe if it had still been semi-alive it would have worked, but definitely not with a dead tree.

Not knowing what to do, Natasha and I decided we were going to abandon the tree by the dumpster and let the trash guys grab it. Well, Slanty was very wide at its base and it wouldn't fit through the door (by my estimation), and even if it did, it woudl leave a trail of destruction in its path leading directly to my apartment. Not wanting to make it that obvious, I decided to break Slanty apart by hand. Natasha held a bag, and I pull Slanty apart branch-by-branch. It took about 30 or 45 minutes, numerous pokes and scrapes, 4 bags of trash, and I had Slanty stripped down to nothing but a body and a few 6 or 8 inch stubs hanging off of it. We took the enormous bag and covered up the bottom and tied it up. We covered the top of the tree (which still had some branches) with a large garbage bag and tied it off. Slanty looked like one of those funny barbells with the big round ends.

Natasha grabbed one end of Slanty with an oven mit protecting her hands, I grabbed the other end with the matching oven mit, and we accompanied Slanty out on its death march. We carried Slanty down three flights of stairs, across two parking lots and eventually arrived at the garbage bin. We left Slanty there, banished from its wonderful existence in our apartment covered in bright white and blue lights.

Good-bye Slanty. We'll miss you.

Post your comment

Name

Mail

Website