The Secret To Really, Really Good Gift Giving

Because I am an awesome husband, I am determined that one day I will give my wife a present on our anniversary she wasn’t expecting. It will be a super-surprise.

This is a goal I’ve been working towards for some time. Years, in fact. We’ve just scampered past our 13th year but I feel I’m getting close now. Real close.

The trouble with a guy giving a gift on his anniversary is the missus is already propositioned to expect a present. You can give her a car and she’ll still feel like she was kind of expecting it because she was expecting something.

But you see the point I’m making – what a classic trap this buying presents is for young married men. To avoid this, I’ve thoughtfully failed to buy my wife a present for 13 straight anniversaries to date. She’s bought herself something, sure, and I’ve bought myself beer, but basically there’s been a noticeable lack of gold, diamonds and combustion engines from me.

It’s all going swimmingly to plan.

And if I had any doubts I was doing the right thing, well yesterday sure laid them to rest.

The delivery lady walked into the branch struggling under the weight of a magnificent bouquet of orange and yellow flowers. Naturally, all the girls wanted their name to be read off the little card, but there can be only one.

“I wonder who these are from,” pondered the lucky lady.

You see, it isn’t unusual for the girls to receive flowers from customers after they’ve helped them out. People are lovely.

She read the card.

“Robert?” she mumbled, trying to recall anyone by that name she’d assisted recently. “Robert….”

“Why would Rob be sending you flowers?” one of the other girls asked.

“Oh!” she said. “They’re from Rob.”

That’s right, it was her 20th anniversary and even after reading his name on the card it still didn’t occur to her the huge bouquet of flowers might be from her husband.

For the rest of the day she was beside herself with joy, and just a smidge of wonder her husband managed to pull this off.

Rob, I can’t help but think you’re doing it right, and if, like I suspect, the secret to superb gift giving is a total lack of anticipation, then I’ll have to make a note that twenty years looks like being the sweet spot 😉

But of course the problem now is, how are you going to top this next year, Rob?

When not over here, Bruce Devereaux hangs out at his Big Family Little Income Facebook Page. Come join us 🙂

 “Raising a family on little more than laughs.”