Christmas, What’s the Real Key?

Two or three years ago Kurt and I were in the car on our way to visit some friends. I don’t remember what the topic of the conversation was but as usual after Kurt has made his point about something he said, “But the key is…” and continued with further analysis of his own statements. After that he said, “But the real key is…” and on this occasion I had enough. I was thoroughly annoyed because the whole time I thought I had be listening to the real key, so I said, “tell me, what’s the REAL fucking key?” And we both started laughing. We (meaning I) told all our friends and everyone made sure to point out every instance of Kurt saying, “But the key is…” or waiting for him to finish telling what the key is and then ask, “so what’s the real key?” Yes, we are all a bunch of asses.

This Christmas I bought Kurt a foosball table. We were in Costco one day seeking gift ideas for my parents when Kurt’s eyes locked onto his future mistress (Not an actual person just another object that will take more of his attention away from me much like the motorcycles.) I bought it for him the next week and took it to a friend’s house for safe keeping, but because this was something Kurt was really drooling over he had to make comments like, “Don’t look at me and give it away, but if you aren’t going to get the foosball table for me for Christmas we should go buy it soon since Costco always changes their stock.” So in order to through him off the trail I had to get Kurt two or three smaller gifts that were expensive enough to make him think that’s all he would get.

A few days before Christmas there was a raffle at work and I won a 32” LCD TV. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it since Kurt and I bought an LCD TV just two months ago, but as soon as I got it into my truck I got an idea. I got back to my desk and immediately called my friend who works in a different department, “Don’t tell your husband, because he’ll tell Kurt”. She had to hang up quickly to call her hubby because she had already emailed him about it. Whew! That was close. I got the TV home and took it up stairs to the spare room. When Kurt got home from work I had him get the wrapping paper down from the rafters in the garage and I wrapped up the TV. When I was done Kurt looked into the room and the first thing he said was, “Well it can’t be an LCD TV because we just bought one.” He’s absolutely correct. It’s just not possible.

On Christmas eve I went to out friend’s house to pick up the foosball table and left it locked up in the back of my truck. I went upstairs and found an old ring box, a gift bag, and a DVD case. I put the key to my bicycle lock in the ring box and wrapped it up. I put the key to my truck in a plastic bag and then into the gift bag and topped it with some crumpled wrapping paper, and then I taped the key to my truck topper to the inside of the empty DVD case and wrapped it.

We usually open our presents at midnight on Christmas eve, but Kurt didn’t want to stay up till midnight and I told him that his gift needed to be opened that night, so we opened them at about ten. He carried the LCD down and I brought out his smaller gifts. I told him he had to open all in a specific order starting with the large one. He of course has to make several guesses before opening anything. He’s great at spoiling gifts. He shook the TV. Lifted and rattled it. Set it down. Walked around it and finally said, “All I can come up with is LCD TV”. He was so puzzled. He took off the paper and then looked up at me, “You just used a TV box, right?” Nope that’s the real thing. He was so confused. After he got all the paper off I told him that I had won it.

The next one he unwrapped and said, “Should you be getting on one knee for this?” I told him no, “Just open it”. Then he said, “It’s too small for the key to an MV Augusta.” The fact that he knew it had to be a key if it wasn’t a ring is just uncanny. He opened it and glared at me. I had to pull the note down that was stuck in the top of the box for him. It read, “The Key”. There were no comments or guesses before opening the gift bag gift. The note was taped to this key. It read, “The Real Key.” Then he began to lecture me as he held what was clearly a wrapped DVD case about my gag falling through because the motorcycle announcer that also uses the phrase, “The key is…” was from AMA races and not MotoGP and World Superbike blah blah blah. I told him to just open that damn thing. He unwrapped it and saw that the case was from a bird training video, “so what’s really in this?” He opened it and saw…another key. On this key I had a note that said, “But the real key is…” I had to tell him to go use the last two keys to get his present. At that point he knew exactly what it was.