Larry came home from a week-long business trip today bearing gifts. Not having recovered from the sardine incident in April, I was a tad leery of what he would bring me. True to form, he pulled out of his suitcase a box of chocolates sha
ped and wrapped to look like 6 Swiss Army knives. (Undoubtedly an improvement over dead fish, but still...) Apparently, my giving away the chocolate sardines to the loser at Bunko last month had not sent him the right message."Ha, ha!" I said, trying to be a good sport. "Funny! So, uh, did you get anything else?" Larry handed me a square, thin black envelope that contained a thin slab of chocolate. Really, it looked like chocolate rations you'd hand out in a POW camp. Something in me snapped.
"Look," I said. "I'm a girl. You're supposed to bring me things that are pretty."
"I thought you liked chocolate," he said.
"Yes! But pretty chocolates. Men are supposed to bring girls pretty things. After 20 years, you don't get that?"
Larry, flustered and confused, rummaged in his suitcase some more and pulled out a plastic container filled with a variety of little chocolates in different colored wrappers.
"Okay!" I said. "You're getting the idea!"
Just then Susie came upstairs. "Daddy!" she said. "You're home!"
"Hi, honey! Look what Daddy brought you!" said Larry, holding up the T-shirt he'd picked out for her. Susie burst into tears (I know that is a cliche, but really - that's what she does).
"I don't like that! It's ugly!" she cried.
That apple didn't fall far from the tree, now did it?
