The Gravy Boat

When my wife and I got married. We made a conscious, calculated decision to save some of our gift cards for the holidays so that we could spoil each other a bit without breaking the bank.

I've always tried to have a well-rounded Christmas for my wife where she gets a book, some clothes, a couple of fun things, some things she wants, and then the big surprise gift that just blows her away and makes her say..."oh wow, I was NOT expecting this. You are soooooo thoughtful, funny, cool" you get the idea.

Last year, I hit a home run. No, not the gravy boat, I'll get to that in a  minute.

Shortly before we moved, we started playing with the Super Nintendo that my parents had passed off to me when they moved out of my boyhood home. It mostly sat in a box un-played collecting dust. For some strange reason, we decided to pull it out and start playing games on it again. Mostly Mario Brothers. One of the signature games for the Super Nintendo that my family never had was Mario Kart. These days, you can find one of those games at a fairly inexpensive price on eBay. So, I found it, bought it, and gave it to her for Christmas. Home run. I pretty much expect all my gifts to be home runs. Such was the case with the gravy boat.

When we were engaged, we registered at several different places, one being Crate and Barrel in part because my office (at that time) was close to one. After the dust settled and the gifts stopped coming, we had a little bit of money left over on our Crate and Barrel gift card. So I told her I'd run over there and take a look. Before I did that, I looked at our wedding registry to see if there was anything that we didn't have that we really wanted. It popped off the page. The beautiful, white gravy boat that nobody had gotten us. How could they/we have missed such an oversight? I would not let Christmas pass with us gravy-boat less. As I stared at it in all of its $14.99 glory, I thought of my wife's reaction when she opened it on Christmas morning. The happy-surprised expression on her face would say it all. This, was a surefire home run.

Getting the gravy boat was a bit of a challenge. I had to make three separate trips to Crate and Barrel to secure the crown jewel of my wife's Christmas. On the second and third trips, I called in advance to make sure they had it and I was assured they did. Both times I came up empty, but I had someone dig one out of the back. Finally, the gravy boat was ready to come home and sit under our tree until the big day.

Christmas morning finally came. I placed the gift towards the back so that it would be one of the last things that would be opened. As the wrapping paper flew and the gifts were open, I could barely contain my excitement. Finally she got to the gravy boat. She peeled back the paper, opened the box and there it was...I could swear there was a bright light emitting from it, that's how cool I thought it was and how excited I was for her to open it. "Oh, neat," she said.

Neat?

"Yeah, you know it's from our registry, pretty cool that I remembered huh?"

"Yeah, that's nice. Okay, your turn."

Apparently, the gravy boat was not the out of the park home run I thought it would be. She thought it was nice, but how often do we really serve gravy? It was not the make or break Christmas gift I thought it would be...so you could say that rather than a home run, it was more of a bunt...it gets you on base, but not in impressive fashion.

Some friends of ours got a kick out of this story when we told them a few years ago.

Guess what they got for Christmas?