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
