Them! Vs. Christmas

Take a moment to perform one of the following sense memory exercises:

1) You are a young adult of either any sex and ethnic background walking on the sidewalk of a relatively safe Los Angeles neighborhood at night. If you don't know any better, you consider the air to be chilly and you can pretend that it's fall. The interstate emanates a constant white noise, and the air smells of that weird apartment building three blocks south. Suddenly, you see a Christmas tree thrown to the curb. A man emerges, kicking it furiously while it's down.

2) You are a slightly older young adult of any sex (but most likely female) and ethnic background (Thai? Vietnamese? Mmm. Viethaimese.) and you enter your apartment building's garage early in the morning. You are carrying a bag of trash, which reeks of cardboard from mail-order Christmas presents or just moving in. Living so close to the interstate, your ability to taste is inevitably dead. You open the door to the trash bin and see...(roll2d10)...a Christmas tree sticking out of the bin, still green, with lights still on it, a week before Christmas.

How do you react?

The understandable answer is "WTF?" But should you ever experience either of these scenarios in real life, allow me to fill you in on TF.

TF is that the Christmas tree someone paid $40 for, the first real one they ever acquired since moving out of their parents' house, was covered with ants.