Flashback Friday # 168

OCD Tree, OCD Tree, How Beautiful Are Your Branches

Greeting to all. Are you ready for Christmas yet? I'm not, and wasn't when I was younger until the task of putting up the Christmas tree was finished.

As I was putting up the tree this year, my wife was running errands. When she got home, I was putting on the finishing touches. She commented that I decorate it really nice. Every thing looked just where it looked like it should be. I told her there was a reason for that. Mom was very OCD about the Christmas tree.

When I was much younger, the task of putting up the tree fell to me & Sir Gattabout. The ornaments were evenly distributed to the tune of making sure we had the exact same everything. A line of demarcation was made, and I had to decorate my side & Gattabout did his. Mom would pipe up "There's to many blue ornaments in that particular area." or "You can't put those ornaments next to each other, they're the same shape. I had to watch where Gattabout put his ornaments so I could judge where mine could go.

When Gattabout joined the Army, the tree task fell solely on my shoulders. I would have to scale the ladder and climb into the attic to drag everything out (including the tree). It had been drilled into me, same colored ornaments can't be near each other. Similar shapes couldn't either. I would take all the similar ornaments and put them on first. One at the bottom, one in the middle, one near the top. One in the front, one in the back. All around the tree I would do this. When I was finished, there were no similar ornaments any nearby. I didn't realize just how ingrained that had become until Lady Nottaguy-TYG mentioned it, since we normally trim the tree together.

Some of the weirdest things stick with us longer than we can imagine. A Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night.