Thinking Outside the Box

What’s on my mind? In this unusual and tragic year, Himself wanted to make our annual Christmas garden extra bright to cheer up our neighbors. So here’s what happened when he did. 

A few nights ago, our friend Bev brought her two-year-old granddaughters to tour the garden by night. Of the many lit gardens around here, ours is probably one of the smallest, but Himself and I always get lit at Christmas. 

We stayed inside during the children’s tour, but saw one one little girl pet an artificial deer, while the other put a small gift bag on the sidewalk - perhaps because I told Bev I’d leave a small box of chocolates on the mat for the girls. This story is about those chocolates. 

Rather than give homemade cookies for Christmas - perhaps not the best idea in the Year of COVID - I’d previously bought a few small boxes of Belgian chocolates as holiday gifts for the neighbors. 

Ever-efficient, I’d already gift-tagged the boxes and placed them under the tree, briefly forgetting I’d promised the children chocolates, too. Problem: I hadn’t bought an extra box. When Bev rang the bell, I was unsuccessfully trying to claw off a tag labelled “Lee and Carole,” our neighbors across the street.

An uncomfortable number of seconds passed before I gave up and opened the door, rearranging my face from frenetic to calm and cow-like. 

Pasting a placid smile on my face, I said: “Hi-i-i, Bev … Nice to se-e-e-e yo-u-u-u.” Trying to appear relaxed, I lounged against the door frame while - behind my back and unseen to Bev - sending Himself desperate hand signals. 

With a passable command of Spousal Signaling, Himself caught on that there must be an “issue” with the box of chocolates. 

Himself is sometimes hit-and-miss in Spousal Signaling, but his talent for Spousal Mind Reading is keen. He instantly grasped that whatever “issue” the box may have, an “issue” always means trouble.  

Putting 2+2 together, Himself remembered I’d been bending over the box until the doorbell rang. He correctly concluded the “issue” must be the tag on the box. 

And so he jumped into action, doing his best to scrape off the tag before finally giving up and scissoring it off. As I stood in the doorway, he slipped me the box of chocolates, Mission Accomplished. I, in turn, placed the box on the mat, closing the door as the girls began their tour. 

Only then did I see the tag Himself had cut from the box. There it lay on the hallway table - his prize in Spousal Signaling, his victory laurels for Spousal Mind Reading - the scissors directly beside it. The tag read: “Milk Chocolate with Truffle Filling ... Mocha Crème Filling Enrobed in White Chocolate …” and so on. Unsure exactly what the “issue” was, Himself had removed the tag describing the chocolates in the box.

Which is how Bev’s granddaughters came to receive a box of chocolates labeled “Lee and Carole,” and why we, in turn, got a tantalizing description of the contents of a box of fine Belgian chocolates we’d just given two two-year-olds.

We felt like dorks. We are dorks. If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Lee and Carole will never know what they’ve missed. Unless they ask to tour the garden, of course. In which case, we'll hand them a box of chocolates labeled “Tom and Ann.”

© Nicole Parton, 2020