Christmas lighting 101

Today I was condemned to a day of stringing Christmas lights along side my father. There was absolutely no escaping his wrath if one was unfortunate enough to misunderstand his not-yet slurred directions, regarding the proper placement of festive lighting. I am not quite sure if he has or has not written a book on the subject but he spoke with the air of having written a dissertation on it. It seemed that there was nothing that I, my brother nor cousin could do right. His disapproving gaze, through the smoke of a Marlboro stub hanging carelessly on his lip, was enough to send all of us into a frantic, at times nervous, laughter which only furthered my pop’s frustration causing his aorta to become swollen. Damn, that the man has a short fuse! Our neighborhood on that Hialeah (a part of Miami highly populated by Cubans.) day was filled with his chorus of: “Ño!” which is short for coño; the Cuban equivalent of the word Damn. There was one point when he asked for a nail, while up on the ladder and the only God forsaking nail available at that time was one welded to another equally forsaken nail. (See pic below) Our hysterical laughter at the thought of my father in a pending situation where only such nails were available drove all of us to tears. At one point we took a break and a rode to Wal-Mart were I was stiffed into paying for more Christmas lights and cat food. It was well past 12am when we finally got several sections of the plum tree lights that were not working to start blinking. Well tomorrow is Thanksgiving which means more decorating, cooking, shopping and more lecturing by the world renowned expert on “your-doing-it-wrong.”

El viejo fajao con el albolito y las luzesitas.
(Translation: the old man fighting with the tree and little lights)

Forsaken nail(s).