The main problem with finding a Christmas present for my wife is that I used up all my good ideas when we were still dating. At that time, I wanted to prove how wonderful I was, so I really racked my brains and bought or made her gifts of – if I may say so, myself – breathtaking thoughtfulness and creativity. I made certain never to miss an important day, even remembering Valentine’s Day and getting her thoughtful little somethings on Goundhog Day and Easter that made her cry. (In a good way!)
All this was a mistake. A) I set the bar way too high. For the rest of my married life, I will have to live up to the standard I set before married life had beaten me down. And B) As I say, I used up all my good ideas, which leaves me in a bit of a bind this Season, because I haven’t had a particularly good year so far, gift-giving wise.
For our anniversary in June, I bought my wife an ice cream maker. I know – buying a kitchen appliance for a romantic holiday is generally fraught with danger, but I had really thought this one out and was preparing to write a tremendously touching card to go with it, explaining that she was more precious to me than Ben or Jerry. For a man as round as me, this would have been heartbreakingly quirky and lovable.
I had the ice cream maker delivered to me at work a few weeks before our actual anniversary, so that my wife wouldn’t see it and the surprise wouldn’t be ruined. At the same time, I didn’t want to leave it at work; we’d had a little bit of petty theft and as much as I applaud the idea of more ice cream in the world, I didn’t want to buy more than one of these babies. So I swung by a friend’s house on my way home to leave it there. Unfortunately, nobody was at home, so I left the box in the back seat of my car, intending to drop it off on my way back to work the next morning.
I didn’t count on my wife’s superhero-like eyesight. On arriving at home, her first words were, “HihoneyhowwasyourdaywhatsintheCuisinartbox?”
Two months later, for her birthday, I decided to bite the bullet and be extra-thoughtful. My wife and I agree on most things, but one fundamental area of disagreement is that of figure skating. In short, my wife likes it a lot and I (to put it mildly) do not. My objection to skating is not so much to the skating itself (though I’d rather remove my own appendix than sit through another Stars On Ice show – something else I foolishly did during our courtship), than it does with my problems with calling it a “sport”. I have strong views on what constitutes a sport and what does not. If a particular activity has an objective measure of keeping score, it is a sport; if it has a panel of judges deciding how pretty it is, it is not.
Sports
Baseball
Sumo Wrestling
Cockfighting
Bass Fishing
Australian Rules Football
Not Sports
Gymnastics
Synchronized Swimming
Cheerleading
Figure Skating
Cake Decorating
My wife does not share this straightforward, logical position and actually keeps track of various skaters’ performance in “The Nationals”, which sounds like a horse race to me (a sport).
At any rate, my wife’s all-time favorite figure skater is Scott Hamilton, or as I call him, “That Guy Who Looks Like Luke Skywalker Without Hair”. Several weeks before her birthday, I spent a weekend poking into some of the weirder, less savory neighborhoods in eBay and put in series of bids on an autographed photo of Scott Hamilton, finally winning it. I was excited about this, because I knew my wife would never see this coming. There was no way - not a chance in Hell - that she could ever suspect that I would buy her something like this.
That actually would have been the case, if eBay hadn’t accidentally sent my wife a series of emails with subject lines like, “You Have Been Outbid on That Picture of Scott Hamilton”, “The Scott Hamilton Picture Could Still Be Yours” and “Congratulations! You Have Won The Bid On That Scott Hamilton Picture!”
Knowing that I had dropped the ball on my wife’s birthday present (not a sport), I knew I had to find some way to redeem myself. Fortunately, I had a fallback present prepared.
My wife loves walnuts and really loves baklava, the flaky, Middle Eastern walnut pastry. After little research on the internet, I found that the very best baklava in the world is supposedly made in a little bakery in Beirut, Lebanon. Astoundingly, the bakery has a website. For a mere wheelbarrowfull of money, they were willing to send me tins of baklava by the kilo. Knowing that this baklava would have to get through a post-9/11 wall of Customs red tape on its way from Beirut, I estimated that it would be delivered just in time for my wife’s birthday. I crossed my fingers and ordered it.
It arrived at work two days later. The Customs guys had opened one of the two tins, verified that it was actually baklava, and sent it on its way.
[Let me just say for the record that this restores my confidence in the common sense and good judgment of the United States Customs Service. The fact that they instinctively knew that much like matter and anti-matter, bad people and good baklava don’t mix, makes me realize that they are on the side of justice.]
The package was delivered to the main office of the school where I teach. Normally, the staff in the office will set packages aside for me or have students bring them to the classroom where I am teaching, but in this case, there was no way that they were going to leave this mystery unanswered and actually had me paged over the intercom to come pick up my mystery package, so I could open it in front of them.
Teachers are suckers for cookies of any kind, and baklava (apparently – I hadn’t known this beforehand) holds the same type of siren call for them that the actual sirens did in The Odyssey. Once the word went out that I had this baklava, my life at school got very weird. Teachers I had never exchanged two words with before would walk up to me in the hallway and greet me with, “So what’s this I hear about the best baklava in the world?” Deciding to play things safe, I kept the baklava locked in my desk until my wife’s birthday. Teachers started circling the classroom like vultures in ever-shrinking circles. In the end, I had to sneak the baklava out to my car before dawn one morning, making sure I wasn’t seen – just to be safe.
The baklava lived up to its reputation, by the way. Although the flavor is very subtle, its active ingredient seems to be heroin. It was so good, in fact that I have to admit I ate my share of it.
Okay, more than my share.
I’m not positive, but I think my wife started weighing the tin every few days to make sure I wasn’t stealing from it. I do know however, that as the supply of baklava decreased, suspicious, resentful looks from my wife increased. The sheer deliciousness of this baklava is balanced by the stress it puts on a marriage. With the snow falling steadily outside and the possibility of being snowbound not being out of the question, it would be foolish of me to give my wife more of this stuff for Christmas.
I’m thinking of buying her monster truck tickets – she really won’t see that coming.
