a christmas tragedy

The evening started off normally enough: I invited a friend over to help finish decorating my Christmas tree whilst watching Disney/Pixar's Wall-E. We finished putting on the ornaments and finished watching the movie, so she went home.

Later that night, I was decorating some burned cd's and watching another movie on TV, when I heard a strange clicking noise. Later, I would realize this noise was not clicking, but cracking. Towards the end of my movie, the noise had become so frequent, I stood near the source of my noise - my Christmas tree - trying to determine the exact culprit.

No sooner had I done this, and heard the noise again, when my tree suddenly started to fall over! I was holding my tree precariously, trying desperately to fix the stand when I noticed some white-ish fracture lines along the base of the plastic stand. I had only just noticed these lines when my tree decided to break promptly into three, yes, THREE pieces! After all of this happened, I was left holding the remnants of my tree - the middle piece.

A few questions that you may have at this point:

1. Q: Why did your tree break into three pieces?

A: I believe in purchasing fake Christmas trees to preserve the real ones in the wild. Fake trees come in separate pieces - some assembly required.

2. Q: The tree spontaneously broke into three pieces, really?

A: Well, to tell you the truth, I had thought of the brilliant idea of pulling the tree out of the stand - my mistake is that I grabbed the middle section. Had I grabbed the lowest section, I quite possibly could have propped my tree up against the wall until a new stand was purchased. Nuts!

3. Q: So, what's the big deal?! Take the tree back to the store!

A: If only it was that easy. Unfortunately, due to a few oversights from last year's purchase of the tree, I failed to get a receipt for said tree, and didn't notice until I got home. Double nuts!

My younger sister, the comedienne, pointed out the hilarity of my situation: "The best part is that your Christmas tree broke and it's not even December!" Yes. I'm still laughing...

I have to admit if this had happened to someone else I would be laughing up a storm. All I can say, is that I'm very happy right now that I bought (mostly) plastic ornaments. Phew...After all is said and done, it's been quite an eventful night. I'm left with a feeling of emptiness, that I'm sure can only be brought on by such a tragic event. My Christmas tree is in ruins on my floor, and I'm not quite sure how to resolve this "issue".

Does anyone have suggestions, similar situations, or a support group I can contact?