Toxic Tree

It's 3 days after Thanksgiving, so of course it's time to kick the Turkey carcass and pumpkins to the curb and break out the Christmas decorations. I hate people who do this, but we have extenuating circumstances this year, so I found myself cutting down a Christmas tree on Black Friday while wearing a T-shirt and jeans. It's just not the same experience when you can still feel your extremities.

Anyway, we had friends in town and it was only opportunity we were going to have to do the whole tree thing, so we did it. I'm a little concerned, because we got some new lights for the tree this year and after I put them up, I read the side of the box and saw this:



So I'll probably be dead soon -- or at the very least, dead from the waist down -- since I didn't wash my hands and I was snacking throughout the entire process. Luckily, I didn't have to pee during the light stringing, so I avoided direct transfer of lead dust to my man junk.

I like how they don't even say "may expose you to lead." Nope, this shit is guaranteed. No question. You WILL have lead on your hands when you are done handling these things.

So when did stringing a set of lights on a Christmas tree become a life-threatening endeavor? At what point did the coating on the outside of the wires become more dangerous than the electricity on the inside?

I don't know. I think I'm just going back to those big-ass bulbs we had when I was a kid. So what if they actually raised the temperature of the room and got so hot tinsel melted to them? At least if you died in a fire, you'd die with your reproductive organs intact.