The Gift

It was so freaking cold that day, I could hardly stand it. I was nestled deep under my covers, though, safe from the cold floor and the cool air in the room. This damned heat isn't worth five cents, much less the $200.00 a month I spend on it, I thought to myself. It was January, and I missed Tedd. I wondered what he was doing at that moment, many miles away in Alaska. MANY miles away.

Just as I wiped the sleep from my eyes, a loud ring erupted into the air like an unwanted intruder. Make it stop, my mind yelled. I hate loud noises in the morning. My cat just stared at me from the foot of the bed. Well? Any chance your lazy ass will answer that? She seemed to say. Hmmph. Look who's talking.

"Hello?"
"Hey hon!"

Damn it, Tedd. There's truly NO NEED to EVER call me at 7am. Truly no need.

"Hey Tedd. How's Alaska?"

He'd only been there for a year, and yet I asked that question every time we talked. His answers were always different.

"Oh, it's great this week! I have a present for you. I'll send it on. But I'm not going to tell you what it is. I think you'll love it."

I heard him muffle the phone as he yelled, "Grammy! Come stir this horse stew!"

"Oh, Thanks, Tedd. When will you be home?"

I decided to ignore the 'horse stew' comment, since I surely heard him wrong. People don't eat horse. Do they? Holy Mackerel if they do.

"Probably in June. But I'll send your gift in the meantime."

Tedd thought he was my boyfriend. I saw him once a year. Hmm. Once a year. If that made him a boyfriend, then relationships are a piece of cake.

"Okay Tedd."

As I hung up the phone, I wondered who 'Grammy' was. He was living in a lodge with several other men, and two older ladies. I guess one of them was called 'Grammy.' I was disappointed in Tedd for ordering an old woman around. Perhaps he was starting to crack up there. I remembered that episode of 'The X Files' where a team of geologists went mad in the Arctic and killed each other out of paranoia thought to be caused by isolation madness.

Maybe ol' Tedd was too isolated up there. But Tedd can barely use a gun. So I didn't worry about him too much. Now that I was awake, I put one bare foot on the hard wood floor. It was ice cold to the touch! My housemate Michelle says I'm nuts for never wearing socks. I just can't wear socks. My feet have to breathe. And still, they smell like corn chips.

As I milled around the kitchen, preparing the coffee, I pondered at what Tedd might have gotten me. Tedd's not the best at getting gifts. The idea is nice, but...how do you tell someone they have terrible ideas?

When I first met Tedd, he got me a VHS tape rewinder. That's all it did. It was shaped like a race car, and you put a tape in it, and it would rewind the tape. Um, VCRs also did this?

I said I liked tigers, so the next gift he got me was a little plastic toy tiger. I'm 35.

Trying to be nice to my father, Tedd got him a nose-hair trimmer.

My parents' dog got ill one year, so Tedd got them books on Animal Medicine. We thought Tedd would never stop telling us about how diabetes affects dogs and how a dog's blood sugar can drop in an instant.

So that I could write him more, Tedd gave me a little portable word processor. Problem was, this little thing had the loudest key clicks I have ever heard. It sounded like a thousand cats clicking their claws across the floor as they walked, every time I typed on it. Gee, Thanks for the stares I got, Tedd.

So I wondered what I was in store for.

I began to get mysteriously titled emails from Tedd. "Yaks: The other white meat" and "The Frozen Wasteland: A Tale of Insanity."

Yet, Tedd never said much in these emails.

So, when a large package arrived at my door about a week later, I pondered at its odd shape. When I opened the box, I had to refrain from bursting out in laughter.

Tedd had sent me a pair of Yak horns, along with a photo of himself, looking unshaven and quite mad, holding a bowl of what I assumed to be Yak soup. Poor Yaks!

God Bless, Tedd. I still have those Yak horns. They adorn the wall above the guest bed, so that visitors will always have a good laugh when they stay with me.

And Tedd? I don't really see him anymore; I'm not sure anyone does. I think maybe he's off in the tundra someplace, having stew with Grammy.

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haha

That was for Terre and Thursday, my friends! Thanks for the assignment, Thursday; hope it gives a few laughs.

Have a great day.