Christmas Tradition #3: Booby Traps

Hello Everyone--This is Matt and I'm making my first guest appearance on this blog so that I can write about a favorite Sanderson family Christmas tradition: booby traps.

Family lore tells us that this tradition started with my grandparents. My grandpa was sick and tired of my dad and his siblings "sneaking a peek" on Christmas morning. I am still puzzled as to why they were motivated to peek, because family lore also says that all my dad and his siblings only ever got oranges for Christmas. Why would they go to such trouble for oranges? Was their childhood really so devoid of simple pleasures that they were actually excited by the citrusy goodness of a single, solitary orange?

I digress. These booby traps started more as barriers than traps. One of the first Christmases, my grandpa simply piled sheetrock over the top of the basement stairs to prevent the kiddos from reaching the Christmas tree on the main floor (or from escaping in the event of a house fire).

My dad kicked it up a notch by adding in a series of real traps that mostly relied on pots, pans, and string. His best trap was probably from 1990--a mighty fine year that also saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gross millions at the box office and MC Hammer rise to the top of the charts with an all-time favorite album Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em. On Christmas morning of 1990, I opened my bedroom door and was surprised to find that I could not see the end of the hallway because of the amount of string draped from wall to wall. At first, I gingerly tested the string, expecting to trigger a cascade of pots and pans, but nothing happened. I grew less and less careful as I made my way through the string and no trap was triggered. Finally, I came to the end of the trap and just as I thought "Man, this one was lame", I tripped the string and heard MC Hammer blaring in my ear: "Can't Touch This. Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh . . . ."

We've kept the tradition up in the years since. Em and I set a trap at her family's that included an exercise ball, crate paper, plastic wrap, and a laundry basket--I'll leave the details to your imagination. We are getting more and more sophisticated. Neal came along and got us into using lasers and motion sensors. I still like the string and pots/pans set up, though. I think I'm going that route this Christmas--my first Christmas as a non-apprentice trap maker.