Crazy Christmas 3D Glasses Claim Two Victims
I am sleeping in the library on an air mattress that takes up the entire core of room. Every spare inch of the room is otherwise occupied with books, luggage, or boxes. I think there’s a chair in the corner, but it’s beneath a pile of clothes that could clothe the residents of Manchester.
This library has obviously doubled as a storage room. I guess it still does, only the stores kept here now include a 42-year-old English teacher and his bag.
I lie in the bed and stare up at long shelves of paperback spy thrillers, National Geographics, classic novels, yellow DIY books. Occasionally, I reach out and pluck one from the shelf, give it a quick perusal or read it to the end.
I’d get up, but getting out of the air mattress is more arduous than it should be. It’s sort of like trying to get out of a bowl of Jell-O without using your arms. Also, every time I manage to get out of the bed, I stub my toe. Every. Time. By the weekend my toes are bloodied and bruised stumps that once were utilized in helping me walk. Now they are slightly hairy pain sticks that jut out of my feet.
It doesn’t matter if I get up or not, I am on holiday, so my routine has been shattered, it no longer exists. I keep up my workout, read a lot, do some writing. But otherwise, my days are long and short, dark and light, and filled with family or very few people.
By the following week, I realize that my handle on reality has become slightly, well, tentative.
This failing grasp is not strengthened by the fact that I wear pajamas all the time and have eaten so many carbs that I would die of bread poisoning if that was a thing. I can’t remember what fruit tastes like. I reach greedily for a vegetable in the fridge, but it turns out to be a green bag of Christmas fudge.
Since my dad has a famous sweet tooth and his patients and colleagues love him, the house is overflowing with cookies, chocolates, and sweets. The quantity and variety are such that each room in the house could have a theme: the living room is nutted chocolates, the dining room is pralines and caramels, the kitchen is caramelized figs and pound cakes. I walk throughout the house simply dipping my hands into baskets of sweets and pushing them into my face.
I don’t want to say that I start to go a little insane, but I start to go a little insane. No routine, no days, no structure, no goals. It’s as though without the parameters of my routine and schedule I allow everything to slip away. I always thought it would take something rather monumental to drive a person nuts, but in my case it only took seven days without a routine. I can now fully understand the men I knew who became pitiful alcoholics or recluses after retirement.
Also I am spending more time with children, who speak with a logic that I am not used to when dealing with university students. The toe stubbing forces me to shuffle around the house on the heels of my slippers. I try to hang on to the wispy tendrils of my sanity for another five days.
I think I am going to make it. I spend a night at my sister’s and then brother’s houses. I spend another night with visiting friends. I have normal conversations again. I eat some carrots. My toes begin to heal. I climb the stairs faster. I recharge my fitbit.
Things are OK until New Year’s Eve. My sister and I stay in and relax. We clean the kitchen and the dining room. As we clean, we come across several pairs of what look like 3D glasses.
“Oh, these are weird,” my sister says, handing me a pair. “Look at the lights on the tree.”
I slip them on and follow her orders. I flinch. “What the hell?”
“These glasses make every Christmas light into a snowman.”
Yep. That’s exactly what they do.
And there are a variety of these as well. 3D glasses that transform every Christmas light into Santa, or reindeer, or elves. It is insane. I mean, as though I have literally gone insane. Snowmen reach out branchy arms from each light. Santa’s face and hat pokes out of each tree light or each light on the house next door.
Any sanity I’ve forced myself to regain over the previous few days is now gone. My toes ache in premonition. I shuffle to bed well before midnight, not even reacting when I stub my big toe on the desk, then my pinkie toe on the chair. I drop into bed and dream that I am trying to plan a class on a train, which I can’t do because my cat won’t stay in the fridge. She’s wearing a green sweater.
