The Gift Option

‘Shall we get you a smart watch?’ The husband is like that. Any decision, even suggestion, has to have me complicit in it. You can guess how that progresses. ‘But you said so…’ thus removing even that wifely prerogative from me.

‘I don’t want a smart watch!’ I cried. I’d just signed off on a hissy fit. I’m having more of them these days. Maybe a direct result of being 24/7 with the man I love. Thirty-four years ago, this state would have been all my Christmases come at the same time. Now, less so.

It wasn’t a hissy fit without reason. It seldom is. We were in the beginning of July and I was yet to get a birthday present. NB: My birthday was in the beginning of February. The husband had proffered the lockdown as an excuse. He tends to forget his five years of scientific training and the importance of precise calculations when it comes to puzzles like the dire necessity of getting his wife a birthday present at the correct moment in time.

‘Why?’ We were back to the smart watch.

‘Because it’s too expensive.’ ‘Besides, what would I do with a smart watch?’

‘You could take calls on it?’

‘I have a smartphone.’

‘It could count your steps.’

‘I have a Fitbit.’

‘You could listen to music on it.’

‘I have a smartphone, remember? And Saavn. And Spotify. And Podbean. On it.’

I was on the brink of another hissy fit. Because, early in the lockdown, writhing in the pain of my helix piercings – yes, we’re back to that again! – I’d asked the husband to get me a pair of comfortable earrings as soon as the shops reopened. It clearly was not even a blip on his mental horizon any more.

What is a woman to do? Last year, the husband took me literally at my word and got me a year’s worth of cleaning as a birthday present. Never mind that it didn’t quite stretch to a year because the cleaner upped sticks to be with her partner in North Wales. This year, clearly, my word did not amount to much.

I changed tack. ‘Actually, why not? I believe I can connect my bank card to a smart watch and make payments through it. That would make shopping so much easier.’

Alarm quivered on the husband’s face. Then red panic. I could literally see the cogs whirling in his brain as he manoeuvred gears to pull himself out of the ditch he’d reversed into.

I might not have studied engineering, but I’d definitely learnt about the ‘quality of mercy’ and its ‘twice blest’ nature. So, eventually, I asked gently, ‘Shall we go and look at some earrings?’