theITbaby

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The Christmas tree proposal

A short story from pre ITbaby times.

2008. I’ve been going out with the woman I’m going to ask to marry me for over a year and known her for quite longer than that. Nobody suspects that I am going to ask her, but I’m going to wait until after Christmas/New Year’s because those dates are generally… meh, let the day be its own thing is what I say.

January second, 2009 is the day I plan on asking Kim. It’s early December 2008 at this point, she lives in her place, I live in mine. She tells me I need a Christmas tree.

I don’t. I really don’t. But she wants me to have one because she has one and feels like I should – Christmas was hard for me for family death reasons, I didn’t particularly celebrate, and in 2005 if I remember correctly I’d lost half of my Christmasy stuff in a flood.

I also didn’t want a tree because if all went according to plan I would have hers next year. Not trying to not blow the secret, and feeling my protestations were bordering on giving away something or being branded a Scrooge, we ended up going to Target and grabbing a fake tree as a couple.

Set up, decorated, and that Christmas came, Kim got sick with something awful through New Year’s, and was basically a sick snotty mess at the time I had been planning to ask her. I now felt pressure because a couple of people had been let in on the plan, neither of which I particularly would trust being able to hold a secret more than a day or two. Also because one kept thinking I was going to propose on New Year’s Day and called me twice that day when he didn’t see a ring thinking I had chickened out.

Watching an episode of True Blood, I asked sicko if she wanted to marry me, and she in her fever and delirium said yes.

In December of 2009 we had been married a couple of months and now had two trees. I placed an ad on Craigslist with the story and met a buyer in the parking lot of a Kroger near me. I sold her the tree and wished her a very great time and hoped the tree had as much good story for her as it did for me. I just had zero space for two trees.

It’s April of 2022 now, it’s been 13 years since that purchase and due to a credit card company sending me notices for the past 6 months that my card was going to be cancelled if I didn’t use it (haven’t used it for at least 4 years,) I looked at my purchase history. It’s really short because, as noted I do not use that card.

I thought I’d sold the tree for $10-20 less than I’d spent, nope. Made $5.47 on it and now want to locate who I accidentally overcharged.

Come on Hallmark, option this story, make it, and let me find who I owe $5.47

Paul King

Paul King lives in Nashville Tennessee with his wife, two daughters and cats. He writes for Pocketables, theITBaby, and is an IT consultant along with doing tech support for a film production company.