▸ Column · Present-day Queens, New York — a residential block's Christmas-decoration arms race, landing on the desk of a Channel 6 reporter
APRIL O'NEIL replies.
Replied to by April O'Neil, with a rebuttal from Krang.
The letter
I've owned the best holiday display on my Queens block for eleven years — hand-strung icicle lights, a nativity I repaint every autumn, a music routine that once stopped a minivan dead in the street. Then a new guy two doors down, Adam, plants a four-story inflatable Santa that drones like an idling bus and throws my whole yard into shadow. Now everybody photographs his nylon blimp and walks right past my hand-glittered reindeer. I struck back with a second light-up sleigh; he countered with an inflatable Mrs. Claus and a snowman the size of a water heater. My wife says I'm "losing to a man with a leaf blower and nothing but time." Do I go nuclear with a projection-mapped light show, or is there a graceful way to concede that a box fan beat three years of craftsmanship?
April O'Neil replies
Okay, here's the thing — you've handed me a whole story and I haven't seen you check one line of it. "Everybody photographs his and walks past mine." Says who? You? Did you stand on your own stoop for an hour and actually count, or is that the version you've been telling yourself since the box fan showed up? Because that's a feeling, and you're about to spend real money on it.
Verify it, then act — never the other way around. Go ask the people taking pictures. Three honest questions and you'll know whether you've actually been eclipsed or just spooked.
And notice the frame somebody slipped you: this is a contest, and you're losing. Who benefits if you believe that? The guy with the leaf blower, sure — but mostly the idea benefits, the one that says louder and bigger always wins. I'm the only person on my crew who can't punch through a wall, and I've never once felt small standing next to people who can. Eleven years of repainting that nativity by hand is the thing the blimp can't fake. Don't let a pool float talk you out of remembering that.
— April O'Neil
Krang weighs in
Sentiment. O'Neil tells you to interview the pedestrians — as if a census of gawkers were a weapon. It is not. Listen to Krang: that humming colossus draws power and violates ordinance. Acquire the schematic — noise code, wattage limits, the bylaws your fool neighbor never read — and file. Legally, coldly, in triplicate. You do not "concede." A conqueror does not retire his lawn because a rival owns a box fan; he annexes the airspace above it. And your wife, who narrates your defeat so cheerfully? Note who profits from your surrender. Soon all of Maplewick Lane will kneel. Begin with the paperwork.
— Krang
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