“Little Multicolored Lies”
I started dating Susan in August, so we
had been together a few months when the Christmas Season fully took off. She often told me that Christmas was her
favorite time of year, partly because of all the light displays people put on
in their yards. She loved seeing all
that creativity and made her wish she had a yard to be able to put up a huge
display.
Personally, I can enjoy the rare, truly
creative display. At least for the first
few nights. But wireframe reindeer
laughing at a Santa stuck in a chimney quickly goes from humorous to eyesore in
my book. I never shared my feelings with
Susan because it was something she really enjoyed and I didn’t want to spoil
it. Also, I had the feeling I would be
spending many evenings driving her around to look at the displays, and if she
knew how I really felt she would probably think I just needed to see more to
fully appreciate them.
As it was, after Thanksgiving most of our
evenings together we’d have dinner, maybe see a movie, and then she would
suggest going for a drive to look at the lights. We’d pick a road at random and see if there
were any good displays. And I will
admit, some made me smile, but usually I just thought to myself, I’m glad that A, I don’t have their electric
bill, and B, I’m not their neighbor.
One night, we were on this winding country
lane where about every other house had a massive display. As I’m driving along, I’m getting a headache
because every other schmuck is out looking at these lights so there’s oncoming
headlights, impatient headlights behind me, sharp turns, and every ten seconds
Susan going, “Oh, look at that.”
At one point, she said, “Isn’t that
amazing?”
I glance over to see her pressed up
against her window and pointing upward.
I instinctively raise my eyes and see the drab ceiling in my car.
Part of me wanted to say, “I can’t see
whatever you’re pointing at, but it doesn’t matter because I really don’t
care.” But I knew that would have upset her so I just said, “Yeah, that’s
cool,” and kept on driving.
***
This story is based on something that
actually happened to me with one of my girlfriends. I think what she was looking at was one of
these twenty foot tall tree frames with lights.
Apparently they had something really cool on top, but I couldn’t see
it. I think we had already had a fight
that day, and I had a headache, so I just said something along the lines of, “Yeah,
that’s cool,” and kept on driving. It
was probably a day or so before the phrase “little multicolored lie” came to
me, but I knew that had to be a title.
