It’s better to give than to receive. And I give, by cracky! If I was not there to assist Santa, my kids would get a plastic moose that poops jelly beans, and a candy dispenser in the shape of a Wiimote. That’s my husband’s idea of Christmas presents.
Knowing that the men of my house are a bit obtuse when it comes to selecting the perfect gift, I left numerous hints about the Seinfeld Scene-It game that I wanted last year. Heck, you can’t even call them hints. They were bold-faced declarations of the one gift I wanted for Christmas. “We never know what to get you.” And I would shout, “Seinfeld Scene-It! That’s what I want. They have them at WalMart.” You see, it’s wasn’t some esoteric, gossamer, flight-of-the-imagination, eclectic gewgaw that my men would not know if it bit them on the butt and then bellowed, “HA! I JUST BIT YOU ON THE BUTT! BET THAT HURT, DIDN’T IT? MY FANGS WERE JUST IN YOUR BUTT, AND BLOOD IS SEEPING OUT! HOPE YOU’RE NOT A BLEEDER!” Nope. It was just a regular everyday game from WalMart. There were commercials for it. And I would yell, “That’s IT! That’s the game I want for Christmas! See it? They have it at WalMart!” No, it’s not like getting me the one gift I wanted would plunge us into financial hardship. $29.97, people. A fifth of my beloved husband’s weekly allowance. Both boys had more than that socked away. Heck, they could have all chipped in $10. But no.
Did they pick up my gift on one of the weekly trips to WalMart for dog and cat food? No. Our oldest son is 14. Old enough to say, “Mom, drop me off while I run in and get something. I’ll call you when I’m headed for the door.” I do it all the time when I don’t want to go in. The youngest son and I wait in the car. But no. Their father organized a shopping expedition on the evening of December 22. They came back with bags. Their daddy wrapped things. I assumed they had my gift. The only gift I wanted. The gift I had asked for repeatedly for six weeks. But no. NO GIFT FOR ME!
That’s not quite true. I DID receive several books that I had ordered for myself from Amazon. Because you know my children are internet illiterates, and my husband only knows how to go to eBay and look up car parts and old beer trays during work hours. I got some fruit medley candy, which I enjoyed, but needed like a hole in my lady-mullet. And I got DVDs of StepBrothers and House Bunny. And two tickets to see Jerry Seinfeld at The Fabulous Fox, which was a really good gift, but resulted when my sister called my husband to ask if he wanted her to get them, because she had ordered some earlier, when the seats were good, and knew that he could not do something so simple as look up the number of The Fox and call to order tickets with a credit card. He is kind of an idiot savant, except for the savant part.
But I really just wanted that ONE gift. And I didn’t get it. At my mom’s house for Christmas dinner, I might have let it slip that I had only wanted ONE gift, and nobody cared enough to get it for me. My sister said that she had asked about getting it for me, and was told that no, someone else was getting that for her. Because, you see, she got it for her husband. Oh, and he happened to bring it with him, so we could all play, which was like Jeff Probst eating pizza in front of the Survivors.
The story told by my men was that they actually looked for Scene-It on that shopping expedition on December 22, but “…we didn’t see any.” So they got me Apples to Apples, which is a game, and that should count as the same thing as Seinfeld Scene-It. To me, it just says that I do not matter, and I’ve been having myself one grand old pity party since then,
After Christmas, my son reported a stack of Scene-Its at the end of the aisle for $25.97. That stack was one shorter when we left WalMart. I always give myself the BEST gifts.