TMCnet News
Christmas spirit goes through the roofDec 24, 2010 (Kilgore News Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- 'Twas two weeks before Christmas in 2008. Not a creature was stirring in the Nicks' house -- except for mom falling through the attic floor. What started out as a late night excursion to hide her son's new bike quickly became a hilarious story that Kilgore resident Barbarara Nicks could not keep to herself. In fact, Nick's story is now available in bookstores across the nation in the new "Chicken Soup for the Soul Christmas Magic" edition. Nicks, a sixth grade teacher at West Rusk, said the story, titled "The Most Expensive Bike," is her fourth published item in the Chicken Soup books. "Just like any family growing up, any time any incident happens, we all make a big, nice story and call everybody and tell it," Nicks said. "There's always lots of laughing." Nicks' story recounts the events leading up to Christmas, when she tried to surprise her youngest son Eli with a bicycle and ended up dangling from the garage ceiling. Sitting on her couch two years later, Barbara still remembers the day she went Christmas shopping with her son. She already purchased a bike for her husband Jerry and her oldest son was more into electronics. But as they walked the isles of the store, Eli spotted it: A shiny black and silver Manga Invader. "He wanted the bike, but I didn't want him to know that we were buying it for him so I waited and went back a few days later and got it," Nicks said. Buying the bike was the easy part. Finding a place to hide it for two weeks without Eli finding it would prove to be more of a challenge. "I tried to keep it a secret and that's how I would end up falling through the attic because I was trying to keep everything quiet," Nicks said as she remembered the evening's events. "Eli's bike was the biggest item to hide. I first thought I could hide it downstairs in the spare room. It's not a very large bike and I thought it could be hidden behind the bed, but you could still see it. So I thought I'll just go up stairs. It's a regular door to get into the attic. So I decided to hide it up there since nobody really goes in the attic, especially after the Christmas decorations are already out. " So at midnight, as her children dreamed of sugar plums -- or Xboxes (to be more honest) -- and her husband settled in for a long winter nap, Barbara wheeled Eli's present up the stairs to the perfect hiding spot behind some large boxes. But the silent house soon rocked with such a clatter as Barbara's foot slipped off a board and through the garage ceiling. "There's one spot where there are just three planks that you walk over the rafters," Nicks said. "Normally the planks are situated so you step on them with no problems, but they had just pulled the decorations down and one of the planks moved off its support. I didn't know that so when I stepped on it, it just shot me right through the ceiling." To Barbara's surprise, no one woke up to the loud crashes, which enabled her to climb out of the hole and finish hiding Eli's bike before anyone noticed. With the bike tucked away, Barbara began to survey the damage to herself, her house and her husband's car. "I had scraped my leg pretty bad and it was bleeding, but I kept on with the bike because I knew the pain would set in later and I wouldn't be able to move," Nicks said. "I came downstairs and looked in the garage. I found out I had knocked down one of the lighting fixtures and it had fallen onto Jerry's car. I tried cleaning up a little bit so it wouldn't be too bad when he saw it the next morning." Barbara then went back to bed, leg throbbing and mind pondering how to explain the large hole in the ceiling and dents in the car to her husband in the morning. "The way I always think whenever anything happens is money. This is going to cost money. That is going to cost money. So every little thing was adding to the price," she said. "Then when I went to bed that night, thinking about the bruise, I thought is this going to kill me? Am I going to have a blood clot?" Her fears were not settled any by random flashes of light that kept her awake as she lay in bed next to her sleeping husband. "When I woke up and saw the flashes, I thought it was over. A blood clot had reached my brain," Nicks said laughing as she reflected on the night. In what she was afraid would be a death bed confession, Barbara told her husband that she fell through the ceiling. "He chuckled at first because he thought I was kidding, but then I explained the whole thing to him about hiding Eli's bike," Nicks said. "He asked if I was hurt and I told him about the flashes of light I was seeing. I didn't tell him about the car at first. I let him worry about my health for a bit first." After a little while and a lot of worry, Barbara finally realized the flashes of light were not from a brain hemorrhage, but were just static electricity from her flannel pajamas. She said the realization that she wasn't dying made her very happy. "When this happened, the next day I was telling my mother about it and she said I had to write it down," Nicks said. "We were laughing so loud as I told the story that the people in the restaurant we were at kept staring at us." Nicks said the original purpose for writing the story down was to preserve the memory for her kids and family to remember years later. However, be it fate or coincidence, Nicks noticed a small advertisement in a subscription e-mail stating the Chicken Soup for the Soul publishers were planning a Christmas book and seeking submissions. "I had submitted poems before. This is my fourth submission to Chicken Soup. So I thought this time I could try a story," Nicks said. "I decided, 'What's it going to hurt?' So I submitted it." Nicks said she is grateful to her husband, who didn't panic when he saw the damage to his car that morning. By the time she returned home from a day-long educational seminar with her mother, Jerry already had the car in the shop and the hole in the ceiling was patched. While the story is called "The Most Expensive Bike," the total cost was less than Barbara first feared, thanks to the insurance company covering the vehicle damage. To see more of the Kilgore News Herald or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.kilgorenewsherald.com/. Copyright (c) 2010, Kilgore News Herald, Texas Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com. |