It's My Life - Looking at Lights

I don’t always notice things.

I am not very observant about stuff. People I notice things not so much.

For example:

When we were kids my parents would always take us for rides around the area to look at Christmas lights. We would start with a tour of the Easton area and then head up William Penn Highway to see the lights of Bethlehem with the highlight being the Star of Bethlehem. In those days The Star was only lit during the Christmas season, so it was a little more special. Sometimes we would stop in to tour the Moravian Putz.

These evenings would be very stressful for your humble blogger I would invariably not see what everyone else saw. The entire car load would see Santa on the roof of some house in Bethlehem Twp, I could not locate it. My Mother would notice a house decorated in all blue lights and I would not see it. My sister would notice a lights that would flash in a pattern I would be unable to find them.

These trips would be frustrating and often involved tears, mine. We could be driving right under The Star of Bethlehem and I would not see it until someone else in the car would grab my head and point it in the direction of The Star; even then there was only a 40/60 chance of me actually seeing it.

After years of frustration, humiliation and silent sobbing in the back of the car I came up with a solution. Lie. I would pretend to see what everyone else saw even if I was looking out the back window and they were looking front and to the left. “Did you see that Elf flying across the front of the blue house?” “Yep, it cool mom.” “Look at how tacky those bushes look.” “They look like Helen Keller decorated them?” It went on like that throughout the evening even if I was looking at something completely different from the rest of the family. But it made the trip around the Lehigh Valley looking at the lights just that more pleasant for all the parties involved.

Needless to say I have no desire to drive through the “Lights in the Parkway” in Allentown.