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Today is Mr. Right-Click’s birthday! Did I ever tell you guys we met at the Beverly Hills Hotel? No? The Polo Lounge, silly, not in one of the bungalows! Oh yeah, and we saw Brad Pitt on our first date, too. Someday I will tell you about it. For now all you need to know is that the picture above is a commemoration of where we met.
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Since a gentleman should never have to reveal his age–or something like that–I will just tell you he is 7 years older than I am today. Which means he is ancient. I want to dedicate my post to him today, because he makes every day so happy for me and Mini.
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When I try to figure out what kind of a post would best please my husband of nearly two and a half years, I hypothesize that I should deal with some combination of the following:
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But that is a tough bill to fill in just one post. So I think what I will do is tell you about the first birthday gift I gave to Mr. Right-Click.
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Before I begin this story, please understand that Mr. Right-Click’s birthday fell about four weeks after we first met. We were not dating exclusively yet, at least not officially, and when you are online dating that really means something, and I wasn’t sure about how he felt about me, or how I felt about him. It seemed right for me to get him a gift, but what would I get? I didn’t want to get anything super fancy, because what if that betrayed more of my heart than I was ready to reveal? By the same token, I couldn’t ignore the birthday completely, since he had told me about it specifically, and we were going out to dinner at Dan Tana’s and everything.
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Quandry.
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So naturally, I did what I always do in situations of relationship quandry. I consulted the Message Boards.
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The Message Boards were of the firm opinion that I should not get him anything. The majority of The Message Boards, that is. Generally speaking, The Message Boards suggest a low-cost, non-romantic “guy” gift to boyfriends of a few months. But Mr. Right-Click was not even my boyfriend yet, and The Message Boards nixed even a CD gift. Their other default suggestion is a scarf, which would be like buying someone from Hawaii snowshoes. So no.
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Anyway, one of the message boarders related a story about a guy she knew who had a hot tub put in his house. He invited a bunch of people over, including a woman he’d been on a few dates with, to try out the new hottub. (This does not get pornographic, so please turn off the wah-wah paddle music that’s going on in your head right now–Nobody ordered a pizza!) Anyway, the woman shows up with a rubber ducky for the hot tub, like a little cheap, “hot tub warming” gift. Supposedly the guy put it on his mantle, and it was still there when he married her two years later. Lesson learned: crappy throwaway gifts mean a lot to guys in love.
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So we came up with the idea that I should do something like this for Mr. Right Click. Obviously a rubber duck would just be . . . weird. So somebody got the idea to go to one of those vending machines that have toys for kids in them. You know, the ones that are full of things like this:
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And when I was a kid, they cost like a quarter, and you’d beg your Mom at the grocery checkout line. And she’d usually say no, because she knew that you’d forget about it in like ten seconds, but if Dad came, you could usually talk him into it, because that’s what Dad’s do, for some reason. And it would be full of some gross sticky gummy bear hand that you threw on the wall?
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Yeah, that. That’s what we decided I should get.
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So, having decided that, I had to track a vending machine like this down, which is kind of hard if you live in Hollywood, and not, say, Wisteria, or some other mythical place that is home to many children. I finally found one at the Rite Aid on the corner of Franklin and Western, but they only had one machine: the one that dispensed miniature Simpsons bobble heads.
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Stay with me, please. I was running out of time. So I thought, what the hell, and gave the damn thing a whirl, which cost $1, by the way, not $0.25. The first one to come out was Marge.
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Hmm, Marge.
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I dunno about Marge. What if he thinks I’m suggesting that I want to be a housewife or something? Let’s try it again.
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D’oh. Homer?! What if he thinks I think he’s like Homer? No, no no. So I tried again and got Lisa. Lisa was probably the most appropriate one, actually, since my personality is not so far off from Lisa, but I couldn’t bear it. So I tried again, and got Lisa again. Damn. I need more quarters. Two more tries, and I still keep getting Lisa. What is the universe trying to tell me? Gaaah. Try again, there can’t be any more Lisas in there–Maggie–GAAAAAH! even worse. He’ll think I want a baby!
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Finally, after ten tries, I got Apu. Apu the clerk of the Kwiki Mart. Was it the message I wanted to send? Not really. But I was tired. And the worst thing I could see him taking from Apu was that I am weird. And I am weird, so is that really so bad?
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Well, here we are, four years later. Mr. Right-Click does not have Apu on the mantle, but to be fair we have moved and no longer have a mantle. I’m pretty sure he tried to keep him, but since then we have not only moved, but decluttered several times–not to mention got married, had a baby, opened two businesses, bought a house, and started our life together. Someday maybe I’ll be going through a box and happen upon Apu, and then remember back when I didn’t know you well enough to trust myself with buying you a present. For today, though, I love you, Mr. Right-Click, and I promise this year’s gift will be much better.
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*Idolatry of Mini, of course
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