The Christmas secret

Joe is refusing to tell me what he got me for Christmas, and it is driving him nuts.

Every year he is tortured by the knowledge that somewhere in our house sits the perfect gift for me, and he can't tell me what it is. Sometimes the burden of keeping this secret to himself for several weeks, or even several days, becomes too great, and he blurts it out.

This year his inner torture started early, right after Thanksgiving. With the air of one who is determined to reform his ways with respect to some crippling addiction, he announced, "I'm not going to tell you what I got you this year."

To his great disappointment, this did not bother me at all. "I like surprises," I told him.

"Well, just don't go looking for it," he warned.

"I don't want to go looking for it," I said.

Secretly he would love for me to find my gifts. Then this tremendous pressure to keep it a secret would be relieved, and it wouldn't even be his fault.

The general clutter in our house seems to expand greatly at this time of year, and Joe takes advantage of this by plunging the bags with my presents into the middle of this clutter, guessing that I will not attempt to deal with the clutter until January, when there is nothing else to do.

But ironically, I am MUCH more likely to stumble upon his carefully hidden cache by accident, simply by observing a bag where no bag normally resides, even amongst clutter, and saying to myself, "What is THIS doing here?" and looking inside to discover what the offending item could be, and then saying, "Oops." Whereas if he would just TELL me, "That bag legitimately belongs there, and contains the most awesome Christmas present ever given," I would never look inside.

To avoid such a catastrophe, I thought it prudent to ask him to tell me where he hid my present.

"Ah HA!" he said triumphantly. "You DO want to know what it is. Well, I'm not going to tell you."

"I don't want to know what it is," I said. "I just want to know where it is. That way if I see some strange bag somewhere I won't wonder what it is and look inside."

He said he was not born yesterday.

Of course he did not believe me, because when HE finds a suspicious-looking bag this time of year, his mind thinks: strange bag -- gift for me -- must peek. Whereas MY mind thinks: strange bag -- intruder -- must relocate and destroy if necessary.

But he is keeping to his resolution this year, and his lips are sealed about the contents and whereabouts of my present. So it looks like we'll both get what we want this Christmas: he, to surprise me; and me, to be surprised.