SGT Bill's Observations on Life December

Happy Holidays to everyone, from the Heart of Dixie.

You know what I love about this part of the country? I can go outside on a cold, crisp winter night and see thousands of stars. Do you ever just look up at the stars? Well I do. Until I get dizzy or my neck starts hurting.

I have to go out in the backyard to see them, because the front of the house is lit up with all of those dang icicle lights. Icicle lights. I used to like them, but now everyone has them. What a pain in the rear-end, to get up on the roof and put them on, and then all the neighbors do the same thing. Now all of our roofs look the same again.

My dad used to like those big fat bulbs that were all different colors. You can hardly find those anymore. I think next year I’ll just build a nice Nativity scene.

Some of my neighbors have gone out and bought these big, life-size blow-up Snowmen and Santa Clauses and all that. Is it just me folks, or are those things about as tacky as a plastic pink flamingo on your Aunt Hilda’s front lawn? I’ve been wishing a big gust of wind would blow down the street and send Frosty and Santa flying across the state line.

I‘m pretty sure it was Wal-Mart that came up with that idea. Those shrewd marketing engineers. Wal-Mart put those big, tacky blow-up snowmen out in the front of the store and they sold like hotcakes. In case you didn’t know, Wal-Mart has mind control over the residents of my community. If you go out there on a typical Saturday afternoon, that’s where most of the residents are. If they are not there, they just left a few minutes earlier or will be there later.

I don’t go to Wal-Mart in the daytime anymore, unless Rhonda makes me go. I just don’t like being crowded. I always seem to be stuck on the aisle where the two, umm, most rotund women in town have their buggies (that’s shopping carts for you northerners) blocking both sides of the aisle. They will sit in the middle of the aisle in their pink and purple sweatsuits and talk about all the local gossip, while I patiently try to formulate escape routes. Since they opened up 24 hour operations, I wait until about two in the morning, when it’s just me and the shelf-stockers. Yep, the only people who don’t talk to you in Wal-Mart are the people who work there, with the exception of the door greeter and the cashier.

My dad wants to be a Wal-Mart door greeter when he retires. Who doesn’t? What a great job. No matter how crappy your day has been, the Wal-Mart door greeter can always make you smile. That's because they get paid to be polite. That’s why door greeters are always older people. They just can’t find any polite young people. In any case, I think Wal-Mart needs to get rid of all these blow-up Santa Clauses and Snowmen and put out some nice Nativity scenes.

That reminds me of a story my Garrison Commander Colonel Thomas Young, (a fellow Georgian), told today. It seems that riding through a small town here in Lower Alabama, he saw the most beautiful Nativity scene he had ever seen. He noticed however, that the three wise men were wearing firefighter hats. So the Colonel stopped in at a nearby convenience store to inquire about the Nativity scene. The elderly clerk seemed offended, and said, "You must be a Yankee! Don't you read the Bible son?" The Colonel was shocked, and assured him that not only was he not a Yankee, but he read the Bible everyday. So concerned, the Colonel returned to Fort Rucker and went straight to the Post Chaplain, a native of Alabama, and explained what had just occurred. The Chaplain quickly flipped the Bible open and said in his southern drawl, "lookee, here it is in black and white, the three wise men came from a-far." …….

Next season, I’m going to build my own Nativity scene, without the firefighter hats. I want my neighbors to see what this season is really all about, the celebration of the birth of our Savior. From SGT Bill and Rhonda and the whole family, we hope you have the happiest and safest of Holidays. Pray for our men and women overseas, that they may be with us next year. Be good to each other– SGT Bill