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even though I was still forced to use them at times. As I finished up my last job on Christmas Eve, just before midnight, I counted my change and barely had five dollars. I wanted her surprise to be something Christmasy, yet it needed to be practical, so I hurried to a grocery store which closed at midnight. When I was young, the only time I got oranges or nuts was at Christmas, and I decided to buy some for her. At ten cents a pound, I bought a forty pound box of oranges, about five pounds of nuts, and had enough left over for a candy bar. I drove home with my surprise and left them in my pickup. Our small apartment had one bedroom that wouldn’t fit both a crib and a bed, so we slept on a lumpy hide-a-bed in the living room. When my wife went into the bedroom with my daughter, I raced outside and hauled the loot in and stuffed it in the coat closet. About 2:00 in the morning, when my wife and daughter were asleep, I snuck into the bedroom to retrieve one of my wife’s stockings. Now, I must say that I grew up with almost all brothers, so I knew very little about women or women’s things, so, in the dark, when I reached in her drawer and pulled out a nylon, I figured it was as good a stocking as any. I stumbled my way back to the coat closet and started stuffing oranges into it as fast as I could. Every once in a while, I would reach into it to see if it was getting full, but the level of oranges never seemed to rise. At one point, my wife stirred, and I was sure she was waking, so I quickly threw in my “I Love You Coupons”, which were 3X5 cards with things I had written on them like, “One I Love You Coupon Good For Breakfast In Bed” and things like that. I also threw in the nuts and the candy bar. 12