COLUMN: Lights

I am bad at math. This isn't exactly a newsflash in my life. I came to terms with my disdain of numbers long ago.

I'm not entirely mathematically incompetent. When not writing this column, I sell ads for our various media platforms. I work with numbers all the live-long day. But when customers call, thankfully they can't see me counting on my fingers and gripping a calculator for dear life.

Most definitely I was one of those people who sat through algebra and geometry classes muttering through clenched teeth, "I will NEVER use any of this." And you know what? By and large, I was 100% correct. I can't think of ONE single time I've needed to know the square root of ANYTHING. I have never looked at a triangle and gone, "Man, if only I had the length of that hypotenuse." Math is for suckers.

Or so I thought. Every year about this time, I'm reminded of why geometry is a thing. You clearly need a deep math background in order to hang Christmas lights.

When I got my own house, the realization that I could finally have my own outdoor Christmas lights made my heart grow two sizes larger. Or maybe it was just the cholesterol. Either way, I was excited.

Don't get the wrong idea. I've never gone overboard, nor will I. My crippling fear of heights sees to that. I might be bad at math, but I can definitely tell you that an object weighing over 250 lbs. falling from a 20 foot ladder at a gravitational speed of 10.93 m/s reaching an impact energy of 6774.01 joules WILL HURT. A LOT. My December decor will always remain at ground level, thanks much.

I also prefer my Christmases holly and jolly rather than wacky and tacky, so no inflatables or animatronic Santas for me. Sure, there's a part of me that would love a display visible from space with lights sequenced to a yuletide dubstep soundtrack, but who has time for that? (Other than that one AMAZING house in Coal Valley everyone should see.)   

Instead, I play it simple. Each year, I deck the edges of my front porch with a modest arrangement of red Christmas lights. To the holiday connoisseur, it's probably a ho-hum display at best. To me, it's a triumph of the will.

I own exactly eight strands of red lights and five extension cords. This is all I need to run lights around the railings and support columns of my porch. And every year, I have to spend an hour remembering how to do it. Then I spend another hour actually doing it, then another hour realizing I did it wrong before tearing it all down and starting over. It is easier to solve a Rubik's Cube than hang these lights.

Light strands 1-4 plug into one another and cover the south and west railings. Strand 5 covers the north railing, while 6, 7, and 8 adorn the three support columns. Strands 1-4 plug into extension cord A, strand 6 plugs into B, and strand 7 plugs into C. Strand 5 plugs into D, which in turn plugs into 8, which plugs into E, which runs under the porch and plugs into C. A, B, and C then plug into power, and voila -- Christmas magic. And the reason I'm telling you all this is so I can re-read this column next year and remember how on Earth I did it, because I WILL ALWAYS FORGET.

This schematic is the only possible way to get all the lights to my available outlets without cords running across my porch like a snare trap waiting to string my mailman up by his ankles. This year, it only took me three days and two failed attempts to remember the pattern. It also doesn't help that the sun now sets a few seconds past noon each day, so if you were wondering about the idiot fumbling around in the dark stringing up Christmas lights to the glow of his smartphone, that was me.

I have no idea how the Griswolds of the world pull it off. Eight strands of lights is enough to do me in every year. But it's done and my house is officially festive. I've gotten some different feedback online, though. "All red?" one of my Facebook friends wrote. "Isn't that kind of evil?" Another said it's a sign that I'm running a bordello -- and if that's the case, there are SERIOUS problems with my business model, because customers are few and far between. Someone else said red lights on your porch now means you're showing solidarity with the anti-gun movement.

The only notion I want to show solidarity with is that red lights are pretty. My house is tan and brown, and red looks nice against it. Besides, it's the one month I can invite people over without making them figure out the exact address. "It's the house with the red lights." Boom.        

This year, I had a harder time than usual piecing together my tangled puzzle of lights and cords. I tried six different ways of stringing everything together before realizing I was missing a cord. Apparently sometime during the year, Cord E got stolen for DJ Gig A and never returned to the spare laundry basket I've dubbed the "holiday hibernator." But I was so bad at math that I didn't realize I was trying to do the impossible -- I just assumed I was being bad at math.

If anybody needs gift ideas for me, I could use a new calculator. Feel free to drop it off at my house. It's the one with the red lights.