I did something very naughty this Christmas. I bought my husband a mystery box from Archie Mcphee. A mystery box is full of unknown gift items for a nominal fee. The idea is that you don’t know what you are getting, but it is guaranteed to be worth more than that fee. A friend of mine got me onto it. He was getting one for his teenage son. He figured that the items would make great stocking stuffers. I was looking for something more exciting to give my husband this Christmas. There are only so many shirts you can buy the guy. So, I had to do it. What could I lose?
The box arrived in plenty of time for Christmas. I should have known what I was up against when I saw the inventory sheet. Written on it in red magic marker were the words, “A+ ooooh mystery gift!” When I opened it up, I was astonished at some of the weird stuff that was in there. I hadn’t thought about whether the gifts would be male- or female- oriented and, at the risk of sounding chauvinistic, I was not comfortable giving some of the gifts to Dave even as a gag because they were too “girly.” Some were decidedly male, such as an internet urinal, and some decidedly female, such as a pink poodle purse. Some of the items were cultural misfits, partially because they were so chauvinistic: “Ideal Girl” and “Ideal Boy” tissue packs (pink and blue, respectively) showed a dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and dark haired young girl and boy, respectively, with faces that looked very much like idealized Hindu gods. There were many odds and ends which I couldn’t even define. I spent several minutes just laughing at the box. Other items, such as a heavy sheet of shiny paper covered in small rectangular pictures with Chinese writing on them looked like playing cards for several different games – they had several pictures on each offset at different angles with lettering of some kind in each corner so you could imagine a different identification for each rectangular “card” for each side and direction in which you held the card.
I decided not to give Dave the poodle purse, but the urinal was a great gag. As a software engineer, he spends many hours at work at a computer, and, also a computer game enthusiast and web freak, he spends many hours on the computer at home as well. I was being helpful by giving him an internet urinal. I mean you never know when you are in the middle of an important web search and you have to go. I giggled while I wrapped it.
Some of these items were pretty large and would not fit into his stocking. So I wrapped those and set a handful of smaller gifts aside to fill his stocking on Christmas Eve. That left at least another handful of weird gifts that were small enough to fit into a stocking, but now there was no more room. Luckily, Archie had included a black cloth bag the length and size of a wine bottle which had the word “cheers” inscribed on it in pink alongside several pink elephants. I contemplated the cultural significance of this and gave up. It could be an Asian interpretation of the American stereotype of the drunk seeing elephants when totally plastered, (usually polk-a-dotted not solid pink, but one has to leave latitude for cultural interpretation) but I didn’t want to send too much time on that one. But, whatever its significance or strangeness, it was a perfect secondary stocking for the other smaller gifts: empty tins smaller than Altoid™ boxes labeled “firecrackers,” and tin cards with slogans on them from the old Soviet Union. I don’t read Russian so, I can’t tell you what they said, but a picture of a severe looking woman in a head scarf reminded my of Rosie the Riveter from American World War II posters. I also slipped in the coups de gras: a tiny red plastic television embedded in cardboard and sealed in cellophane labeled “Food on TV! Just like your mother used to cook!” When you looked in on one side of the television you could see pictures of brightly colored food dishes like sausage casseroles and so on through a little view finder, all reminiscent of 1960s TV dinners.
Finally, I was set: everything was either in the “stockings” or wrapped and set under the tree. The whole experience was a bit mind blowing and I couldn’t wait to show it all to Dave.
On Christmas morning, we got up and finally made it to the tree about 9:30 after morning coffee and cat chores. Dave began investigating his stocking and was soon puzzled: two plastic and leering skulls small enough to fit in your fist, a plastic hedgehog with pines quivering, and the firecracker tins were just the beginning. He asked, “What is this?” I told him it would all become clearer later. Then we hit the tree. When he got to the internet urinal he just stared at it. I burst into laughter for a full minute. He just looked at me. He studied the sheet of playing cards for a minute. “I don’t get it.” I shrugged. When he got to the plastic martini glass with matching multicolored “cocktail squids,” he cracked up. Up till then I was enjoying myself more than he was, but now he was catching up. When it was all over, he looked at me expectantly. “And so….?”
I looked at him blankly and shrugged again. What was wrong? Why didn’t he get it?
“OK, so there really is no explanation? I thought it was a set of clues that I was just not getting.” His look was a bit skeptical.
“I guess not.” I felt bad. I tried to tell him it was our friend’s fault. That didn’t really fly. How could I tell him that the explanation was as simple as my own amusement at his expense? Merry Christmas, darling!
Bad wife?