Christmas Tree on Drugs

Her young son was in the bathroom across the hall at a slight angle from her bedroom door when she faintly but clearly heard the word 'drugs'. Immediately lowering the paperback book, she looked up, slid her feet to the wooden frame, then the floor and climbed off the water-bed. Moving quietly but quickly, pulling the slightly-ajar bedroom door open just enough to slip through, she gently pushed the bathroom door. Her three-year-old son was sitting on the pot and holding a single sterling silver earring about two and a half inches above the sink. The earring was part of a set of Christmas Tree earrings consisting of an ear-hook, central shaft and 8 or 10 curved flat pieces of silver attached loosely with swivel hinges around and down the stem so that the Christmas tree shape was evident only when the earrings were hanging. He was holding the earring by the hook, with his shorts around his ankles, “This is your Christmas Tree,” he said to no one in particular. Then, dropping the earing onto the sink in a small amorphous pile of delicate silver, he concluded, “This is your Christmas Tree on drugs.”

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