I’ll just come right out and say it: I hate my husband’s birthday. Perhaps this makes me a bad person, or just someone who doesn’t get it, but after eight years of marriage, I had yet to give him a gift that didn’t put a look of utter disappointment or boredom on his face. During the early years of our relationship I ran to his side, for fear that he just happened to enter a coma the second he opened whatever trinket I’d presented. “Are you OK?” I would say, trying to revive his interest. He looked like he’d just bathed in Botox.
Years passed, arguments on the matter were won and lost, and finally we agreed: For the man who had everything and needed nothing, we could skip the gift tradition. Until our ninth year of marriage, during which I found something so unique, so him, that I foolishly broke our cease fire to bear the treasure I believed made the perfect gift. I gave my betrothed the horrible thing I’d heard him pining for during bouts of nostalgic gum-flapping with his high school friends. I gave him a racing ski sweater from the ’80s, the red-white-and-blue kind with the padded elbows for slapping the slalom gates with your forearms and the awkwardly sleek “Euro” fit, for apres ski with the Swedish Bikini Team and Spuds Mackenzie. He loved the gift so much that he went on a retro ski sweater buying spree, a bender that resulted in a closet orgy of fabrics that said, “wake-me-up-before-you-go-go.” After a summer of combing vintage stores, he likes to spend the winter strutting around the house asking how he looks. “Like a young David Hasselhoff staring in a Mentos commercial,” I like to say, which he assumes is a compliment.
With the odd, surprising, and much-celebrated acquisition of the late Preside
nt Gerald Ford’s ski sweater at an auction in Beaver Creek, CO last year, I vowed to continue with our agreement to simply wish my husband a happy birthday. And then this year, I did it again: I found what potentially possesses the means to my undoing, and I found it on Zwaggle: a Foosball table.
So that I could surprise him, I arranged for two of Alex’s friends to help me pick up and move the thing from Denver to Boulder. After meeting the kind Zwaggler who arranged to be home for the pickup, I could see our friend Jeff was confused. How much did I pay for it? Where did I find out about such a treasure? What happens if we find out later it’s broken, or something’s missing? He didn’t see me hand over any cash. “You didn’t use PayPal, in advance did you?” he asked. “I paid with Zoints,” I explained, and then explained again to Alex after we surprised him in the basement with it later that day. “Look how smart you are!” they exclaimed, “How clever! What a great concept!”
It was the first time the men in my life began to understand the power of Zwaggle, and it was blowing their Foosball-loving minds. Just as an aside, and to take a page out of the Dooce playbook, I think it’s worth mentioning that, even after the time I’ve spent speaking the Zwaggle gospel to everyone I know, the only thing Alex knew about Zwaggle before the day the foosball table arrived was that, “I like the way your boobs look in your Zwaggle tee shirt.”
“Uh, thanks,” I say, only taking partial credit for the compliment. Although American Apparel has the word “American” in it, it has no idea how American women are built. Some people make modest fitness goals for themselves that include running farther each day, or finishing a triathlon. Mine is to someday comfortably fit into an American Apparel size XXL after I’ve washed it.
Anyway, with the Foosball table in the house, and Alex making frightening plans to set it up outside, along with a slip ‘n slide and daiquiri machine, Jeff uttered a phrase that may have chilled my blood, had I not been thinking ahead. He said, “I thought you didn’t want us hanging around your house all night.”
Take another look at the photo. Notice anything missing? Stroke of genius number 2: Hide the little spinning men until you’re ready to host a bunch of hooligans from the tri-state area.
Until next year, life is good. And who knows? Maybe I’ll find something even better next year. But if I don’t, I can always use my fallback plan of sticking to the no-gift agreement. Or if there’s ever a relapse of sweater-shopping, I’ll be able to make Alex a page-a-day calendar featuring a photo of a different sweater for every day of the year. I’ll title it “Three Hundred Sixty Five Days of Rad.” I’ll make extras put them up on Zwaggle, because you know you’ll want one, either for yourself, or for your spouse’s next birthday.
” by Audrey Niffenegger makes me swoon. I have bought it for friends, forced family members to read it… I love it! Also, because I can’t help it, “
” by Nick Hornby.
