Nothing says "I love you" like...a box of junk | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Nothing says "I love you" like...a box of junk | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sharon Johnson
11/18/08
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We were down to the last gift on Christmas Eve at my parents’ home. My fiancé handed me a large Christmas gift. “What could it be?” I wondered silently. We had agreed to exchange small gifts, so we could afford the down payment on a house. I quickly unwrapped the package. What I found was a surprise! Amidst packing peanuts laid a bunch of stuff…used stuff. I started to pull the pieces out one by one: an gaudy dragonfly pin, a gigantic mannequin-hand modeling an ugly plastic-bead bracelet, a chipped vase, plus other odds and ends.

I didn’t know how to respond to my box of junk. With a sheepish look I admitted “I don’t get it.”

“You need to keep looking,” he said with a sly grin.

I shook the pieces and turned them round-and-round. Finally, carefully hidden, inside a broken old mantle clock, I found a leather keychain imprinted with the initial of my future last name. On it hung the key to our new home. “I hope you like it,” he said, “Let’s go take another tour.” So we all bundled up and drove across town to walk through the small house that we had purchased in preparation for our future together.

The next day with my fiance's family I learned that my box of junk was in fact a bit of a tradition. Over the years various family member had been the “lucky recipients” of unusual collections of stuff from him. I heard stories of other cleverly hidden gifts. After that I have thought of that gift as my initiation into his family.

My husband’s sense of humor continues to this day. Each year someone in the family receives a Christmas gift wrapped amongst a collection of humorous junk. In fact, now my husband is passing his creative wrapping techniques on to our three sons. Two years ago my sister received a series of gifts all wrapped in duct tape. Last year, the giant mannequin-hand resurfaced amidst other junk sitting on top of a false bottom box hiding a lovely necklace for me form my husband and boys. I have to give my husband credit; he plots and schemes ahead of time and his gifts have become a highlight of our families’ Christmas celebrations.

This Christmas will mark 20 years since I received my first Christmas ‘box of junk‘. In that time, I have learned that nothing says, “I love you" quite like a box of junk.

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