Each year when the snow starts to fall one of my favorite pastimes is to drive around and look at all of the Christmas lights adorning people’s houses. We pick out our favorites and the ones in which we wonder why anyone thought what they did was a good idea. We sip on coffee in travel mugs and just take it all in, until I ruin the moment by belting out the song Roxanne, complete with air mic.
The Red Light.
Unsuspecting, well meaning people decide to get into the Christmas spirit by changing out their outdoor lights with red light bulbs.
I blame The Police for making me want to pull into this clueless person’s driveway, knock on their door, and tell them that they don’t have to wear that dress tonight. Or perhaps leaving a note in their mailbox about “How they don’t care if it’s wrong or right.”
I think this is why I have been blessed with teenagers who prohibit me from actually pulling into the said driveways with their eye rolls and exasperated sighs when I start singing. It’s not that I don’t want to torment my girls, but there are limits and if you knew how many of these red lights we have been seeing lately you would totally think that we lived in the Brothel District.
I have thought of other ways to address this ever increasing red light problem. Letters to the Editor, mailing inserts, or driving around with a speaker on top of my van blasting The Police. Although I am pretty sure that blasting The Police will be sure to get the other police involved and I am sure that they won’t care that there are neighborhoods of bordellos all around us.
Education is the best way to cure this problem, before the den of iniquities take over suburbia. If you see a friend or neighbor using a red light in a way that it is not intended for, tell them. I am sure they will thank you.
Don’t just do it for me. Think of the Children.
About Heather Durdil
love that you’re still driving around with teens in the car and don’t want to drop any of them off at, say, the Red Light District. Good for you on the Police. My damn brain usually gets some god-awful horrid REO Speedwagon song trapped in the neurons. Not a good situation, holiday time or not.
REO Speedwagon, you poor girl. (I did google them to see if there were any songs that I liked and once I heard the first few notes of a few I thought it was for the best that I not listen and get a song stuck in my head)
Listen to Roxanne a few more times, you will either want to thank me or murder me.
Twitter Name: DExtraordinaire
bawhaha! That’s pretty awesome! I might just have to go about my neighbourhood hoping that someone has changed their lights…with my notepad for friendly little notes of course!
The song always reminds me of my university days..where every party we went to..it would come on at least once..and when it came on..you had to drink every time they said Roxanne or redlight…or if you were really hardcore (or already WAY too drunk) you would do both. Which basically meant you were chugging continuously throughout the song.
Basically, what I’m saying, is that it’s now 9:57 am, I’m singing Roxanne to myself and wondering why I don’t have a beer in my hand. Thanks :P
You will have to share if you have any neighbors that are either uninformed or living a double life.
Wowza that was the drinking game!
Twitter Name: DExtraordinaire
My MIL apparently did the red porch light thing for years upon years. I came around 5 years ago and giggled everytime we went to her house over the holidays. Finally last year hubby made me tell her why I always laughed about it. Apparently my MIL had never heard of the red light district in it’s true sense.
Twitter Name: unknwndreamer
That is awesome.
Twitter Name: DExtraordinaire
I haven’t noticed any red lights in my neighborhood, but the lady across the street installed a dim green one that casts an eerie shadow over the non-operational water nymph statue in her front yard. It’s hella-creepy.
There’s another house in our neighborhood that we call “The House that Christmas Threw Up On.” They have had a scissor-lift and several drifters working on it for weeks now.
Twitter Name: betadad
Okay after reading that reply my only question is do they let the drifters work the scissor lifts?
Twitter Name: DExtraordinaire
Oh dear, you had me snorting with laughter. At work.
Twitter Name: kimskitchensink
My job here is done. :O)
Twitter Name: DExtraordinaire
I am *so* glad I’m not the only one who does this. I will never forget the winter I was about 15, riding around with my parents looking at Christmas lights when my Mother saw a house with a red light and was delightedly scandelized. She flipped around in her seat and said “Never use a red light, it means a whore lives there!” 20 years later we still laugh about that. Good times, good times…
Twitter Name: christine_9774
LOL!
Twitter Name: DExtraordinaire