Don’t sit there!

Living at 110 Flamingo Street with three brothers and sister was truly a magical time. The five of us were one of the largest families in the neighborhood, and we felt like we could go just about anywhere and do most anything. There was safety in numbers.

And for the most part that was true, but there was one place we didn’t dare go. A place that sent shivers down our spines.

It didn’t have anything to do with Down the Street Bully Brad, nor the haunted forest on the other side of the fishing lake behind the swamp or even Old Mrs. Crabtree’s house at the end of the cul-de-sac.

For seven years, the one place on all of Flamingo Street that we never went voluntarily was our own formal living room. I say that because being dragged into the plastic room by parents, grandparents, and double-dog dares really doesn’t count as voluntarily.

Growing up, my parents did many things I never really understood. Having five kids is at the top of the list. Two other items on my list are reserving one whole room in our house for displaying antique furniture wrapped air-tight in clear plastic slipcovers, and the white Christmas tree.

Dad said the plastic slipcovers were there to protect the expensive furniture from us kids spilling drinks. He also cited dropped peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and marks from crayons as reasons why everything was trapped behind plastic.

I don’t know why Dad was so worried about that furniture getting damaged. In order for damage to occur to the priceless couch and chairs, Mom and Dad would first have to let someone actually sit on it. As far back as I can remember, that was something that never happened.

It’s funny what childhood memories the mind lets surface around the holidays. The smells of baked goods, turkey, ham, and pumpkin pie wafting from the kitchen bring smiles to most people’s faces.

Me? I remember the antique furniture wrapped in plastic in a cold room that none of us kids entered for fear of our very lives.

Dad said it was for its own protection and ours. If one of us kids ever damaged the furniture, then there would be one less mouth to feed around the house.

The other purpose for the cold formal living room was to host the white Christmas tree. When I turned 7, Dad decided that he’d had enough. He wasn’t going to waste any more money on real Christmas trees. Instead, he bought a green fake tree — fake pine cones included.

That year he started a new tradition. Instead of searching the haunted forest for hours to find the right tree, cutting it down and dragging it back to the house, we searched in the attic, pulled the fake tree out of the cardboard box and set it up.

The jumbo green fake tree was only for the family room, not the formal living room. Nope, Mom made Dad buy a white fake tree for that room.

All the ornaments and lights they didn’t care about getting broken went on the green tree. The 100-year-old ornaments from Germany, the ceramic angels, and the gift ornaments from distant relatives – both living and dead – went on the fake white tree in the cold room.

I complained one year that I missed the smell of pine inside the house during the holidays. That started another tradition: Dad chasing me around the house while spraying Pine-Sol.

We used both the green and white fake trees during Christmas until we moved away from 110 Flamingo Street. What happened to them after that, I really don’t know, but I have my suspicions.

They’re somewhere out there stored in a rental unit — right next to the antique furniture hermetically sealed for all time in plastic slipcovers.