From the Five-Dollar Daughter to the Fifty-Cent Wife

I've come a long way, baby. The times, they are a-changin'. Used to be I was my mom's special daughter, worthy of a five-dollar bill every time I packed up a Walmart bag of treats like leftover fried rice, a couple of Little Caesar's cheese pizza slices, week-old tabloids, and, if she was lucky, an unopened box of Crunch N Munch that I bought at Save A Lot just for her. In return, after a 30-minute conversation, each of us sitting behind the wheel of our car on the bowling alley parking lot, Mom would give me five dollars. Yes. It gave me a sense of worth. Even though she might say, "For the boys. In case they want McDonalds."

Now I am searching for my identity. And I'm afraid I've found it. The Fifty-Cent Wife.

Yesterday I came upstairs to get supper ready, and talk to Hick over the back porch rail as he floated just below the surface of Poolio on a raft not quite rated for his weight.

"Did you see your present?"

"No. What present?"

"Well, you say I never bring you anything. It's on the table."

"I don't look on the table. That's your junk. And the stuff for Chex Mix that I'm making for you to take The Pony."

"Not on the table. On the counter. In that area you say I always pile everything. Where you get stuff ready."

"Oh. I didn't put your supper on yet. I didn't look."

"I got you a present. At Goodwill."

"Huh. I can't wait."

"Well...see? I brought you something. I think you'll get a kick out of it."

Yeah. Somebody should get a kick out of it, all right. It's not that I'm ungrateful. It's the though that counts. And Hick was definitely thinking of me when he spent that 50 cents. Assuming it wasn't a half-price sale again. He was thinking of me right after I pointedly told him that he never thinks of me, that I bring him treats all the time without him asking, and I couldn't think of the last time he brought ME anything. The little red horse and the lottery ticket from Sweden or Switzerland (I get them confused, they're pretty much the same place, aren't they) or Germany excluded, because they were from his work trip.

Let the record show that I have never consumed a cup of coffee in my life, yet Hick saw fit to bring me a double-sized coffee mug! Uh huh. Even though I don't drink coffee! But the previous owner of this gently-used treasure must have:

I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I'm certainly not going to take up coffee-drinking! I think it's more of a commemorative treasure. Perhaps Hick will volunteer to build a shack around it for me.

You know the best thing about this special loving present that my Sweet Baboo brought me? It almost made me believe that he has begun growing a rudimentary sense of humor!