How I Know He's The One

A couple months ago I thought up the perfect idea for my first novel. I had read somewhere that Vonnegut had outlined Slaughterhouse Five on the back of a roll of wallpaper but lacking that, I scrawled a time-line out on post-its and stuck them to a dry erase board. They fell off after about ten minutes and I realized I needed a cork-board. Tom, in his infinite kindness, surprised me with a big cork board and some push-pins. Push-pins, not thumbtacks, since I hate thumbtacks because they always get pushed in too far and I have to push my thumbnail under them just to get them out of the damned bulletin board.

So Tom came home with a big gorgeous cork board exactly like what I needed, and he handed me a little clear lucite box of push-pins. "Is this what you wanted?" he asked. I looked down at the perfectly adequate ho-hum push-pins and nodded. There was no way to tell him that if I had been the one to buy them I would have preferred to get half the amount for three times the price just to get the brightly colored jumbo novelty ones my mother would never let me have. I mean, Tom's the one with the job and all and it's ridiculous to buy 25 pins for the price of 200. And after all, I'm thirty one and by all rights I should be past the stage of having to have every over-priced gimmick my mother wouldn't buy me. So I thanked him and I started hanging up my post-its in fictitious chronological order when Tom took a second little clear lucite box out of his pocket and handed it to me. Brightly colored jumbo novelty push-pins, just like my mother never bought me.

No matter how many times he burps into the phone or declares putting my bra into Ryan's dresser to be "an honest mistake", I will always know that he is The One. He knew to buy me the stupid frivolous waste-of-money push-pins, and he got them without complaint.