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Community Corner

Cringing All the Way

This holiday season, my spectacular rack is getting a lot of attention.

This time of year is rife with “to-dos”: attend events, visit family members, entertain, buy and ship presents and try not to ruin (again) the magic for every child within earshot.

It feels like we are all hurtling toward the holidays at warp speed – and some of us are doing so in ridiculous vehicles. You see, even though I’ve always been adamantly anti anything on my car, I find myself driving around this holiday season in a car adorned with soft-sculpture antlers and a giant red nose, thanks to a promise I made to my child last year and deluding myself into thinking it would never actually become a reality.

So now as my daughter marks down the days until the big event, I, too, am eagerly counting down the days until Christmas, albeit for a different reason. This year, Christmas day means my automobile will transform from weird-mutant-ungulate back to simply my car.

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And although the decision to decorate my vehicle has tested me and everything for which I stand, I’ve learned that I can suck it up for the sake of my daughter’s happiness. However, there are also many things I’ve learned that I cannot do thanks to the Rudolph-ification that I took for granted in the pre buck-my-life days.

For instance, a life of crime is temporarily off limits. Not that I was planning any felonious acts, but it is nice to have options. And when your getaway vehicle is festooned with deer paraphernalia, you’re not going unnoticed. (Can’t you just hear the eyewitness now? “Officer, it was a blue Infiniti, Virginia tags, two huge deer antlers on top, fluffy red nose up front, driver looked completely mortified…”)

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I can also not be indignant when anyone cuts me off, takes my parking spot or is otherwise rude to me in traffic. Car costumes correlate directly to a lack of gravitas, no matter how righteous the cause.

Exiting my vehicle at night? Now something I cannot do without having a mild heart attack upon catching sight of the cartoonishly large deer antler in my peripheral vision and believing momentarily it is an arm reaching out to grab me.

I was so embarrassed when going through a bank drive-through recently when an antler fell into my lap as I unrolled the window that I considered removing the antlers during the day and replacing them in time to fetch my daughter. But then I figured a car sporting only a giant red nose would look like some kind of misguided tribute to Ted Kennedy and thought better of it. (Too soon?)

And, finally, there is one more thing I am not able to do – keep a straight face when someone inquires where I bought this decoration and I must truthfully admit to being a customer of www.stupid.com.

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