I have a few strange obsessions. One of them is animatronic talking Christmas trees, especially Bruce the Talking Spruce that appears every holiday season at the Tower City Centre in Cleveland, Ohio. It looks like something that would've scared, or at least startled me, if I saw it as a four year old kid back in the 90s. I'm pretty sure the Avalon Mall back in St. John's had a talking tree that looked exactly like that one many, many years ago, but they called it the Happy Tree.

In case you don't want to look up Bruce the Spruce, then let me explain it to you in detail. It was an old animatronic that looked like it dated as far back as the 70s. It looked like a green, fuzzy monster with branches that moved like the tentacles of an octopus, and it had a really big mouth that flapped whenever it talked. Its eyelids don't seem to work anymore, or maybe it's just missing them, and it looks like it's staring into your soul when it's "taking a nap". Isn't that how a snake goes to sleep?

Sometimes, I have this strange recurring dream in my sleep about going back in time to the middle of the 80s, and finding myself inside a place that looks very similar to the mall from Possibly in Michigan, with the beautiful fountain and all. That's where I see a green, fuzzy thing and hearing its loud, muffled voice talking to the kids. It looked just like Bruce the Spruce, only it wore a Santa hat, and it had working eyelids, and you could hear them blinking. That dream is not a nightmare or anything.