An after-Christmas story

Well, Christmas is over. 

Have you gotten your after-Christmas “thumping” yet?
Don’t know what a Christmas thumping is? A thumping is what you get when you foolishly buy something for your spouse that they don’t truly want.  The thumping itself can take many forms of retribution.
I’ve never had to give Cindy a thumping.  Cindy is the queen of gift giving in our house, except maybe when it comes to clothes for tween and teen girls.  Take me, for instance.
Cindy will spend months carefully listening to everything that I say, taking notice of any preferences I might show for anything.  Then she will hone in on the one item that I appear to desire most, and miraculously, it shows up at birthdays, anniversaries, and that all important Christmas day morning.  I always end up being stunned at some incredibly thoughtful gift based on something that I said long ago.
Now I, being a guy, will do things differently.
After careful thought and much consideration, I’ll look into Cindy’s beautiful eyes a couple of days before any of the afore mentioned special days and say those loving words every wife likes to hear; “What do you want me to get you?”
“You know, it’s not much fun if I have to tell you what I want.  I spend all this time trying to get you the perfect gift.  Why don’t you do the same thing and surprise me for once?”
“No, really, what do you want,” I ask.
“You’re useless.”
“No, I just have a bad memory.  I can’t remember anything.  In fact, there are two or three people running around this house, and I don’t have any idea who they are.”
“They’re our kids.”
“Really?  That explains so much.  You’d think I’d remember things like that.  By the way, what were we talking about?”
One thing I’ve noticed about giving gifts is that women will frequently decide to just get their own gift early.  Beware of this!  It’s a trap, guys.
It’ll start out like this.
“Hey honey, I saw something that I really want for my birthday.  Is it OK if I just buy it now, and you don’t have to worry about getting me anything?”
“Your birthday isn’t for another three months.”
“That’s OK with me.  How about it?”
“Sounds good.  Go get it.”
Two months later . . .
“Hey honey, I saw something that I really want for my birthday.  Is it OK if I just buy it now, and you don’t have to worry about getting me anything?”
“Your birthday isn’t for another two months.”
“That’s OK with me.  How about it?”
“Sounds good.  Go get it.”
One month later . . .
“Hey honey, I saw something that I really want for my birthday.  Is it OK if I just buy it now, and you don’t have to worry about getting me anything?”
“Your birthday isn’t for another month.”
“That’s OK with me.  How about it?”
“Sounds good.  Go get it.”
Birthday . . .
“What did you get me?”
Yes sir, sometimes it pays off to have a bad memory.  Just not for the person that has one.
Still, you have to be careful when your wife tells you what she wants, and it really isn’t something she wants, but it’s something she wants for the house.
The other day I asked Cindy what she wanted for Christmas and she said, “I want a new vacuum cleaner.”
I’ve learned through experience that there are some things it doesn’t pay to go cheap on, and one of them is a vacuum cleaner.  We’ve gone through a string of “specials” that have all the suction ability of a 99-year-old chronic asthmatic sufferer.  I could have put the hose in my mouth and sucked up more dirt on my own.  One vacuum would overheat the motor every time I ran it for more than five minutes.  It’d take the kids about two days to do the house, and it reassured me that Chinese engineering might not be all it’s cracked up to be after all.
Therefore, when Cindy answered she wanted a vacuum cleaner for Christmas, I answered, “Sounds good to me.”
We were headed back from Wal-Mart right before Christmas with the vacuum and I said, “So, we’re good now, right?”
“You know, it’s pretty bad that I have to tell people I only got a vacuum for Christmas.”
“OK, you don’t have to buy me anything, and we can share the vacuum as a Christmas gift.”
“No, really.”
“Well then, do like Belle does at school and tell them I took you to Disney World.”
“You know what I was thinking?  I was thinking we could go and spend a weekend in Louisville and maybe go to the Derby Dinner Playhouse.”
“I was thinking that too, until I sobered up and bought this great vacuum cleaner.  Hey, do I have to wrap it, as you already know what it is?  No point in wasting paper, you know.”
“You really got the Christmas spirit.”
“Yes, I do.  Now, I don’t want to catch you using this vacuum around the house until everyone opens up their gifts on Christmas morning.  You promise?”
Cindy never did promise.  In fact, I don’t think she said a thing on the way home.  I figured she must have been in a reflective and contemplative mood.
We got home and I opened up the hatchback on the minivan to get the vacuum out.  I started pulling it out and said, “Can you close the hatchback,” as I started away when the “thumping” came.  I heard her say “Oops!  I’m sorry.”
It seems the hatchback came down on my head “by accident.”
Boy and I thought I couldn’t remember anything before that happened.
Hope you had a great Christmas! I think I did.  I just can’t remember.