The world’s worst gift-giver … is getting worse. Sad. Pathetic. A real louse.
What’s wrong with me?
“Did a package arrive today?” I asked my wife, nervously. Biting my nails. It was zero hour. Getting close. Her birthday? Near on the horizon. Just days away.
“No,” my wife replied. “Are you expecting something?”
“Me? … Um … no. Why do you ask?” Smooth lousy gift-giver. Any dolt could see through that, and my wife is no dolt. Not to mention I had specifically asked her to pick out her gift — to make sure I got the right one. Then I ordered it online. I waited two days for it to be delivered.
Where is it?!?
The gift? A Fitbit exercise watch. Counts steps, heart beats, rungs on your belt, even guilts you out of eating burritos drowned in sour cream. It was a gift, but also a replacement. I was responsible for … ahem … accidentally throwing away her old one. In an airport parking lot. Still not sure how I managed that one.
Now I had turned an IOU into a birthday present. SURPRISE!
Only, it hadn’t arrived yet.
How had I sunk to this level? This gift-giving incompetence. Shoot, why don’t I start re-gifting things from Christmas? A knitting set my daughter got three years ago that is collecting dust in a closet. Maybe give her a hand-drawn coupon for “The World’s Greatest Hug.” Or a card with a $20 bill that looks like it has spent a week surfing waves in the sewer.
My family has always been bad at birthday gifts. Not to kids, but certainly to adults. Our idea of a good birthday present involves advice on trimming overgrown eyebrows that have begun to look like pine trees. “Happy Birthday! Boy, you sure are showing your age!” That’s the way we do it.
Maybe as you grow older, birthdays get taken for granted too much. Forgotten in the deluge of everything else — kids, jobs, wanting to forget how old you are, wanting to forget you’re not getting any younger. They start to lose significance, and that’s a shame.
But maybe I have something going for me. My wife took a “love language” test a while back. It helps people understand how they want love shown to them: gifts, quality time, acts of service, physical touch or words of affirmation. Turns out her love language wasn’t gifts, but words.
Words!
Shoot, I just happen to be the proprietor of an entire column of newspaper real estate solely dedicated to words. And with it, I have the opportunity to say:
Happy Birthday, honey. I don’t just celebrate another year you’re alive, but also how thankful I am that you were born at all. For if you hadn’t, my life would be much emptier today. You bring so much joy and happiness, and that’s more than a terrible gift-giving louse like me deserves.