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Merry Old England!

Tonight my church youth group had a Christmas party — a dance party, to be exact. The theme was “An English Christmas”… in other words, all things having to do with England. My sister was a go-go girl or something (are/were they English?), and I wore a Beatles t-shirt because I didn’t have much else to wear. I was expecting to have a great time filled with merriment and festivities. And good food. I decided to bring my guitar and amplifier in case I felt like entertaining with some Christmas songs I may or may not have known.

We got there on time, and there were a few people there, but hardly any more people came. My sister was about the only one in the crowd whose dress adhered to the theme. I was expecting the decor to be evergreen and bells and ribbons and holly and mistletoe, but it was tons and tons of front-yard stuff. The party was pretty slow. My friends were there, so I hung out with them and ate a bit. The food actually was good. I also met a nice girl. But then she left and they turned on the lights to play Pictionary. That’s when it got boring as hell and so I called for a ride home. You see, Pictionary is not my idea of a good time. About an hour later, my parents arrived. I gave a couple of friends the presents I had bought them and left. I didn’t play my guitar.

This morning I was walking around the living room when I felt a loose tile. I tried to avoid walking on it because it would have to be replaced. So I was sitting around and I heard a sort of cracking noise from beneath the couch. I got away from there as fast as I could. Later, there was some more loud cracking. I got a good look at the floor and noticed that there was something very wrong. I thought that water was going to burst from the ground, like in some bad movie. My sister thought that it was the giant snake from Beetlejuice. (We must watch too many movies.)

Well, apparently some of the tiles on the living room floor decided to separate themselves from the concrete below. It’s hard to explain how it is now. Say you lay a piece of paper flat. Then you pushed the ends together and the middle rose up. That’s what the tiles look like. Two rows of tile are affected, and it looks like there’s a crack in the grout between them — the highest point. It’s the weirdest thing ever. You might expect something like that to happen over the course of many years, but not in, like, a half an hour. Till it gets fixed, we’re taking pains to walk over the unruly tiles. If you don’t watch where you’re going, you can trip over them.

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