Ohh no...

Well, we have truly done it.

This is the first year my mom and I have ever been entrusted to go to the Christmas tree farm by ourselves, and we have accidentally brought home a tree with severe scoliosis of the trunk. Apparently, we were not ready for the grave responsibility of tree-choosing... We have unwittingly selected one that shares a striking resemblance to the Hunch Back of Notre Dame -- hunched over in a withered sort of way that only someone who has spent their life stalking gypsies from a clock tower can be.

My dad just put it up last night, and my mom and I stood by as he hoisted the tree into place, very excited to prove ourselves as tree-picking champs. The tree was secured upright, the netting around it was cut and the branches pulled down, but as we stood back to admire our handiwork, suddenly the room became very uncomfortable, as we all shifted about uneasily....

The darn thing was practically sideways.

My dad turned silently to stare at me and my mom, his eyebrows raised so high that if he wasn't bald (hahahahaha... I joke), I'm sure they would have disappeared into his hair.

My mom and I grappled desperately for excuses:

"It didn't look sideways at the farm... Maybe our house is just slanted..."

"If you squint, it kind of looks like a sea snake!"

"We were just trying to be charitable. We bought the gimpy tree to voice our support of scoliosis patients everywhere!"

"Yeah... We thought it would be nice to show our concern for the arthritic of our nation..."

... Unfortunately, my dad was not reassured. He just stared at us, then back at the haggard, hunched over little tree, then back again at us, all the while furrowing his eyebrows in a disbelieving sort of way and opening and closing his mouth like a fish (who has also just seen a shockingly ugly christmas tree and doesn't know how to react). Finally, he seemed to get ahold of himself, and after a few minutes he walked off mumbling about how women should never be trusted to pick out decent trees or some nonsense like that...

In our gravest defense, I do think the tree looked a bit less sideways at the tree farm. Or perhaps it was just surrounded by even uglier trees, so when we brought it out to examine, we didn't notice.... Either way though, my mother and I have shamefully failed, and I can say with great certainty that we will NEVER be entrusted with such an important task again.

To make matters worse, my dad is out with our Christmas tree right now, power tool in hand, drilling holes into our sad and pathetic, little tree to try to make it look less bent... He is still mumbling (very rudely, I might add) about my and my mother's ignominious shortcomings with all things Christmas-tree related. I will sneak coal into his stocking this year, I swear. Anyway, if he thinks any number of new branches is going to hide the fact that our tree is a crippled hunchback, he is quite mistaken.

Deformed spine or not, our tree will stand proud, a monument for arthritic patients and sicklings everywhere.

Ho hum, it's really not that bad... Especially if you squint your eyes and tilt your head a bit.... Who says Christmas trees are supposed to be straight, anyway?