It's Christmas time; the nip in the air says so. Janice is out in the yard, teasing up the junk fire to make it burn hot enough to incinerate the odd mass of old family stuff she probably shouldn't be burning in the first place. As the fire grows hungry, Janice looks to the clear Catskill sky that will become evening blue in a minute. The insanity of scale plucks at her heart.
She reaches for the first burn candidate. It's "TV Dog," the stuffed animal generations of kids could lie across or put their chins on as they watched their favorite shows. TV Dog was nearly decapitated and had lost a sewn-on eye via years of cuddling with pre-K children. Now he is reluctant to flame up, refusing to burn, one-eyed and pathetic, at the stake. Craziness! thinks Janice, and she squeezes a plastic container to jet out a little kerosene onto the martyr.