How not to childproof your holiday stockings

We decked the halls last weekend.  Christmas tree.  Christmas ornaments.  Christmas lights.  Harry Connick, Jr. doing his best pa-rump-ah-pum-pum.  Enough to make me long for Thanksgiving again.

But no Christmas stockings.  We considered it.  Even put the 20-pound stocking hangers on the mantle.  But as I hung the first stocking, we looked over at Thing 2 and saw — ding — a flash in his eye.  And the thought of our toddler in the ER with a severe head wound canceled that plan in a hurry.

My wife asked me to it the easy way: pound some nails into the mantle, hang the stockings and be done with it.  The easy-way and I have never been friends.  I decided there must be a way to avoid the nail-holes, use the stocking-holders and save a toddler’s life.  In the process I learned how not to child-proof your holiday stockings.

In my attempt to avoid holes in the mantle the first thing I did was drill two holes in the mantle. One on the underside of each end (in my defense, they were well-hidden holes).  I inserted two small screws and tied down a support wire from one end of the mantle to the other, which was hidden by a the string of holly on the mantle.  Finally, I connected each toddler-killer stocking hanger to the main support wire.

Then it struck me that Thing 2 would not be gently tugging the stockings.  He’d be swinging all 25 of his pounds like tarzan.

So I pounded four nails into the mantle and was done with it.  The only redeeming quality of this bad idea was a lesson I never quite seem to fully grasp: sometimes the easy way is also the best way.

This post is part of the Bad Ideas series.