My husband, Fred, is set to celebrate his 65th birthday next week, but I’m not going to buy him a gift. That’s despite the fact that he thoughtfully replaced my broken bathroom scale with a distressingly precise new model when I turned 62 in early December.
I figure he used his whole year’s present allotment in advance when he swapped our bulky 10-year-old TV for a sleek flat-screen set a week or so before Christmas.
Fred swore it was an accident when he was tinkering with the speakers and the old television fell off its stand, rattling kitchen glassware with its resounding crash and leaving a huge dent in the living room’s laminate floor.
Although the toppled television still had sound and a partial picture, its images had pulsating rainbow rings around them. I worried that viewers would get migraines from watching it or maybe even seizures, so I really didn’t begrudge Fred a new set even if that had been his sneaky intent all along.
Still, it means that I’m acknowledging his upcoming milestone with only a handmade card that recaps a number of mildly amusing things he said that I jotted down during the past year — something I ordinarily construct for our mid-December wedding anniversary except that I didn’t find my list of “Fredisms” in time for last month’s observance.