Fragile

You've all got them, the ancient ornaments that you got from Aunt Bertha on mom's side of the family.  You know the ones, there old and ugly.  They don't match anything else on the tree.  Every year your mom see's them and tells you how she loved putting them on the tree when she was little.  How somehow, Aunt Bertha managed to inherit them when Grandma died, even though she was the younger sister in Decorating the tree every year can be a nerve wracking experience.  You carefully take that precious piece of glass out of the three cubic feet of fluff that has kept it safely tucked away all year and hand it over to Junior to place on the tree.  Yeah, Junior, the little guy that can't walk from one end of the room to the other without tripping over the couch, the piano, or the dog.  You just handed him half an ounce of blown glass that has survived 17 moves, the great flood of '88, cousin Charlie, and that freak incident with the rolling pin.  What were you thinking.  I'll tell you what you were thinking:  "It's Christmas, Junior's getting bigger, he can handle it".  You were wrong.  After the 3.8 milliseconds it took to process that thought through your egg-nog-foggy-head, you leap from the couch in a frantic, heart-pounding instant, only to watch the precious family heirloom drop from Junior's candy cane sticky hands.  Time seems to freeze as you watch the ornament rocket towards the hardwood floor at mach 2.  Your only thought is "How am I going to explain this to Aunt Bertha?".

What you should have been thinking: "Let's smash these suckers!"