I keep talking about this joke that floats around me all the time, and I’ve never really explained it, have I? Well, I’m not going to. I’ll keep you guessing, but in all honesty there’s not much to guess.

Whatever. I felt that joke in great evidence at that moment, as I wandered up to a gathering of a bunch of yahoos around this tacky tree that shone forth in its…entire majestic…tackiness. I snorted as I stood there, taking a moment to stare at it, completely nonplussed as to what the hell it was. I mean, obviously it was a tree, but I didn’t know what tinsel ‘n shit was, or what it was for, and neither had I ever seen a phoenix before and I didn’t understand the motivation behind painting a bunch of bitter, crunchy, shitty cones as though there was something to celebrate. What was there to celebrate?

I kept staring at it though, ‘cause it….well. It was weird and dumb and it made no sense at all, but I kept looking at the tree, at all the goldish stuff and the silverish stuff and the bright bird perched at the top, waiting to drop a merry shit on all of us at any moment. And my chest eased up from the bitter and this angry face I kept on at all times, because I was angry and confused and all that great stuff most of the time—but not right now. It trickled away from me, through my hooves, into the thistles and the dirt I stood on. I wasn’t happy, understand. I was…entranced.

It was that same wondrous sensation you get as a child, when you see something that you don’t understand but it’s cool as shit anyway, and you completely stop in your tracks and you lose your train of thought but it’s okay ‘cause you were probably thinking something dumb anyway, and you stand there in total amazement that something this awesome and shitty and inexplicable exists.

That was me, at that moment. There were people I knew, faces I had seen, that were already present—Mss Day Day and Teeny, and a couple of other nameless shadows I had known from my home in the ‘hills. I ignored them for the time being, ‘cause I was filled with wonder and I didn’t know what to do with it. I just…stood there. Vaguely thinking of things and people I missed—because I missed being a kid. Being a kid came with a whole lot of other perks that I missed too. Like Ma. And Bro.

There’s the joke again. I swear it’s in there if you look hard enough.
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