Gifts that scream ‘He loves me’

Valentine’s Day:  My husband came home with a huge box wrapped in purple ribbons.  “Happy Valentine’s,” he murmured.  “Another gift?” I exclaimed.   He cooed like a pigeon and winked.  “This is different.”  But I was late for a dental appointment so I promised to open it when I got back home. Three weeks passed.  “Oh my goodness, the gift, the gift,” I remarked.  The box was heavily taped on all sides.  “Is this meant to be opened or what?” I grumbled.  When I finally got to the last corner, I ripped the cover and found eight bottles of shampoo.  “Shampoo?”  I winced.  “Weren’t you complaining that you were counting more strands of hair in your sink every time you combed your hair?  These shampoos are guaranteed to stop falling and thinning hair.”   I closed my jaw and pretended to smile.  I must admit that that was a sweet thought, right?

Forget the chocolate bon-bons, the flashy bling-blings and little gold lockets with matching keys.  My husband has gone hard-nosed and practical in professing his affection.  He has also shown distaste for those products pushed by public craze and celebrations.  “Bah!  Ridiculous.  It’s another sales gimmick by consumer brands to compel men to dig deep into their pockets,” he snorted.  He was right, but for wives, mothers, and girlfriends, hearing and seeing all these promos guaranteed that none of the men folk would find any excuse to forget.

My better half will continue to give gifts that do not fall under the same dry and dreary categories.  Look at the items that he has brought home, received with great surprise and incredulity:

• Earphone.  Remember how we’ve been bombarded by medical studies on the hazards of putting the mobile phone close to our ears every time we use it?  Deterioration of our sense of hearing, radiation molecules absorbed by the body that lead to abnormal growths of the “oma” kind (lymphoma, myeloma) can happen.  Well, not with this new gadget. 

 â€œOpen it,” he said.  I unwrapped a box, bigger than the box of shampoo.  Inside was a phone apparatus, in purple — as big as the table model — complete with a long, spiral cord, but instead of the plastic phone jack, it had a phone tube that reminded me of the ones used in old switchboards.

 â€œWhere do I insert this thing?” I frowned.  Husband quickly held the huge purple receiver and inserted the tube to tadan (drum roll)…my cellphone.  “You see that?” he enthused.  “Your ears are protected and kept away from radiation.  You use it like a standard phone except it’s portable and it really works like an earphone.”  I closed my jaw and stared at the apparatus.  This humongous, so-called earphone was bigger than the cellphone.

• Health faucet or biffy.  “Check your bathroom,” said my husband.  He didn’t wait for my response but pulled my arm to show it.  I panned my gaze around my purple-tiled bathroom.  Two questions cropped up — where and what am I looking for?

 â€œLook, looook” he beckoned.  An arc of water suddenly propelled up into the air.  “This is absolutely clean and hygienic,” he raved, “because you use water instead of paper.” I closed my jaw and nodded. Popularly known as bidet, a French word for pony (you ride it much like a pony), it has a nozzle/spray-hose attachment that connects to existing toilet fixtures, making it ideal for small bathrooms.  

 â€œWould it cause flooding?” I asked.

• Flashlights.  Variety is the spice of life, indeed: 1) A tiny flashlight as small as a coin that can be attached to a keychain, perfect to light your path or when checking for any sticky or sharp objects on cinema seats; 2) A four-way beam (throbbing, infrared, white or yellow light ) that could startle a burglar, blind an intruder or cast happy shadows for puppet games; 3) the long, heavy, and pipe-shaped that can be as menacing as a guard’s baton and a soldier’s assault weapon.  “It can crush the skull, you know,” husband warned; and 4) one that was downloaded free on the cellphone’s apps, ideal for emergency situations.

But why flashlights?  It stemmed from this old boy scout’s habit to want to hold a source of light that won’t flicker like a match.  Brownout-plagued Mindanao could use them. 

• Travel pillow.  A comfy cushion that hugs the head and neck like a made-to-order astronaut headrest.  Use it to replace hotel pillows that are either too soft and fluffy, (giving one that drowning, gasping-for-air sensation), or pillows stiff and hard as Yosemite rock, causing one to toss and turn.

• Amethyst quartz and a gadget that emitted white noise.  To make you drift to snoozeville in a wink and give you a restful sleep. 

None of the above showed any mark of literature’s great lovers like Romeo, Heathcliff, Edward Rochester, and Othello.  Tired of dropping my jaws, I finally asked my husband, “What criterion do you follow when getting gifts for me?”  He laughed and simply declared, “It must be purple, naturally.  Don’t they make pretty, perfect presents?”

 â€œOf course,” I giggled. 

And I dropped my jaw again.