The world\u2019s worst gift-giver \u2026 is getting worse. Sad. Pathetic. A real louse. <\/p>\n
What\u2019s wrong with me? <\/p>\n
\u201cDid a package arrive today?\u201d I asked my wife, nervously. Biting my nails. It was zero hour. Getting close. Her birthday? Near on the horizon. Just days away. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d my wife replied. \u201cAre you expecting something?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMe? \u2026 Um \u2026 no. Why do you ask?\u201d 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 \u2014\u00a0to make sure I got the right one. Then I ordered it online. I waited two days for it to be delivered. <\/p>\n
Where is it?!?<\/p>\n
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 \u2026 ahem \u2026 accidentally throwing away her old one. In an airport parking lot. Still not sure how I managed that one. <\/p>\n
Now I had turned an IOU into a birthday present. SURPRISE!
\n<\/p>\n
Only, it hadn\u2019t arrived yet. <\/p>\n
How had I sunk to this level? This gift-giving incompetence. Shoot, why don\u2019t 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 \u201cThe World\u2019s Greatest Hug.\u201d Or a card with a $20 bill that looks like it has spent a week surfing waves in the sewer.<\/p>\n
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. \u201cHappy Birthday! Boy, you sure are showing your age!\u201d That\u2019s the way we do it. <\/p>\n
Maybe as you grow older, birthdays get taken for granted too much. Forgotten in the deluge of everything else \u2014\u00a0kids, jobs, wanting to forget how old you are, wanting to forget you\u2019re not getting any younger. They start to lose significance, and that\u2019s a shame. <\/p>\n
But maybe I have something going for me. My wife took a \u201clove language\u201d 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\u2019t gifts, but words. <\/p>\n
Words!<\/p>\n
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:
\nHappy Birthday, honey. I don\u2019t just celebrate another year you\u2019re alive, but also how thankful I am that you were born at all. For if you hadn\u2019t, my life would be much emptier today. You bring so much joy and happiness, and that\u2019s more than a terrible gift-giving louse like me deserves. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The world\u2019s worst gift-giver \u2026 is getting worse. Sad. Pathetic. A real louse. What\u2019s wrong with me? \u201cDid a package arrive today?\u201d I asked my wife, nervously. Biting my nails. It was zero hour. Getting close. Her birthday? Near on the horizon. Just days away. \u201cNo,\u201d my wife replied. \u201cAre you expecting something?\u201d \u201cMe? \u2026 Um \u2026 no. Why do you ask?\u201d 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 \u2014\u00a0to 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 \u2026 ahem \u2026 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!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[554,561,566],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-nutshells","category-family","category-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1497,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1496\/revisions\/1497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}