psycho

Every year, a few weeks before Christmas, I load the kids into the truck and head out to my favorite Christmas tree lot. The one that I have gotten my tree from for the last 6 or 7 years is from non-profit lot for the New-Life halfway house. They are a halfway house for some serious ex-cons, and they have the guys from the house run the lot. It is sort of like buying your Christmas tree from the Hell's Angels.

Why do I go back year after year?.....The atmosphere, of course.

This year when I get there my kids, in usual form, go barrelling out leaving me talking to myself about not knocking over trees or other people, and I idle in behind them. I first look at the Nobles, which I always want, but can never bring myself to buy because they are twice as much as the Douglas Fir, and either way it will be on the curb with the trash in a few weeks.

So, the kids pick a tree, and I go in search of someone to help me get it. The man I find looks like he wasn't ever supposed to get out, he only had a few teeth left and they didn't look like he was going to have them a whole lot longer, and everything about him said that he probably hadn't made many good choices in life. I liked him immediately.

Being the type of person that can't even go into the grocery store without striking up a conversation with the checker (yes, I am that person), I inquired about his giant drill bits he wore as earrings, and if they hurt. He told me that they didn't but that the ones that had been torn out of his other ear sure did, and he turned to show me his flappy ear skin on the other side. I informed him that I had tattoos, but that for some reason piercings gave me the heebie-jeebies. He laughs and shows me the tattoo on his arm that he got with a paper clip that said PSYCHO in block letters (in the same style I used to write the band RUSH on my notebooks in high school) because that was his nickname. None of this was meant to be intimidating. Psycho was very much a gentleman, and the conversation flowed easily.

He carried my tree up to the front, and handed it off to the guys who trim it up, and asked me if he could show the kids some card tricks while I finished up. I finished my business, had the tree loaded into the truck, and went to gather my kids from the game of three card monty Psycho was showing them, and tipped him well.

I don't know what Psycho did to wind up in prison, nor do I doubt that it is where he belonged, but he was more than kind to me and my kids, and I wish him well. I will be buying my tree there again next year.

*above picture isn't Psycho (well he maybe, but he isn't my Psycho)