You are thankful to everyone who thought of you on your birthday. And you are truly blessed, or fortunate, or [fill in worldview here]. And you acknowledge the many birthday messages, calls and gifts you received, all of which you deeply appreciate. There is one, however, that deserves specific attention.
Your wife got you three gifts, and she totally hit it out of the park on two of them. First, she got you sunglasses, but not just any sunglasses. You had a specific pair of Ray Bans for many years that you loved, but you scratched them up over the summer. You tried to replace them yourself, but you couldn’t find the specific style. So your industrious wife did some research, and she called Ray Ban, and she learned that this particular style has been out of production for a long time. Which makes zero sense, because this style looks better than any other sunglasses anywhere since ever. (Seriously Ray Ban, pull your head out of your ass.) Not to be deterred though, your tenacious wife stayed on the hunt, and tracked a pair down at a specialty retailer in the UK, and had them shipped over here. Like a total birthday boss.
Second, she procured some new dressy jeans for you. And they are the exact style she helped you pick out a few years ago when you weren’t a fat monster. But this pair is in a size that actually fits you without cutting the blood flow to your lower extremities. No more using a belt and untucked shirt to disguise the fact that your pants aren’t buttoned. No more excusing yourself from dinner to go to the bathroom and lower your pants simply to release the fat for a while. Truly, an excellent gift.
Before you get to the third gift, you should mention the black pearl and diamond ring you once bought your wife as a birthday gift. Not since you saw the ring of Calibos, Lord of the Marsh from Clash of The Titans had your attention been so captured by an item of pearl jewelry. It was one of a kind, designed by a moderately famous artisan from a past era. When you gave it to her, she said it looked “like something a sorceress would wear.” Exactly! That is why you loved it. And that is why Erin wouldn’t wear it. What?!? There’s no accounting for taste. But the important thing here is that she didn’t tell you she didn’t like it, or that she wouldn’t wear it. She simply put it in her jewelry box and let it sit there for three years, until it disappeared one day (either lost, according to her, or stolen by the maids, according to you). Which sucks for many reasons, not the least of which is that you could have taken it back and traded it for something she might wear, or gotten a refund, or had it fashioned into a larger sorcerer’s ring for yourself.
In not being frank about the gift, she spared your feelings at the time, but denied you the chance to give a better gift. Or to better learn her taste. And she still sorta hurt your feelings over time anyway, while also kind of infuriating you in the process. “Uh, I don’t think black and white gold jewelry goes very well with this black dress.” “I would totally wear that ring for this charity dinner, but I haven’t been in for a wax in a while, so you know . . . not feeling sorceress sexy.” “I was *going* to wear that ring tonight, but then I decided to do NOT that.”
And you made her vow that in the future, she would just TELL you when she thought a gift was awful. And you would do the same.
Which brings you to the third gift: a hat. She chose it carefully from among many others at an elite haberdashery in Los Angeles. It came in a fancy hat box. It was a gesture of genuine love and affection from a woman you deeply cherish.
And it’s absolutely awful.
It’s a flat cap – the kind seen on newsboys in the 1930s, or maybe effete antagonists from rival fraternities in screwball comedies. Except it’s not gray, or brown, or some understated color. It’s bright orange – the hue of life jackets from old movies that have been colorized. And to complete the picture, she chose to add a hat pin. A hat pin! And not just any hat pin, but a bold, brass feather on the side that is so large it requires two pins to affix.
There is no way you will ever wear this hat. You are unwilling to even pose for a picture to send to your buddies to make fun of it. Not only because it is awful in and of itself. But also because it conjures in your mind’s eye an image of the fifth grader you were – a boy who wore tube socks up to his knees, and checkered Vans shoes, and Ocean Pacific shirts, and loud shorts, and (inexplicably) a single racquetball glove on his left hand . . . and a tan, corduroy version of this exact hat, cocked to the side on purpose.
You shudder. And as your excited kids take turns trying on your new hat, you wince and cringe your way through a ginger but clear message to your wife: you’ll need to get a haircut before you can fully evaluate how it looks.