Mr. Smith hammered away in his garage. He looked down the street and watched Mr. Jones and his sons hauling boxes into their garage. His brow furrowed, and his expression grew harder. He hit the nail harder. Whatever it was, this year, his Christmas display had to be bigger.
For years, the two men had competed to have the biggest and best Christmas display. It started small. Mr. Jones put up some lights and a manager display with a large star on top.
Every one admired it. Mr. Smith felt it made his crude manager that his father had used seem very lame. The next year, Mr. Smith built a large manager scene with lights decking out the stable. Mr. Jones felt it was an attack on his display, and so the following year had put lights all over his house.
John drummed his finger on the side of the elevator. It only took thirty seconds to ride down from the 29th floor, that is if someone was not getting on at every floor, but it always seemed to be an incredibly long and boring ride. John determined that at five-years-old. Recently, he declared that it had only gotten more boring in the twenty-six years since then. He was itching for something different. The daily grind of work was getting to him. Life seemed to be going down in the same boring way the elevator was.