What To Do If You Bought Your Wife a Retractable Laptop Mouse at the Intel Gift Shop Yesterday

You messed up big time. Yesterday, you realized, by the talk about restaurant reservations what day it was. Valentine’s Day. Some inexplicably unromantic part of your male brain told you it was a good idea to go to the gift shop that happens to be in the building where you work

You get there and see that the Valentine’s merchandise has been picked over. There is a singing, dancing gorilla that doesn’t do anything when you press the button, a couple of cards that say “Happy Valentine’s Day, Grandmother,” and the usual Intel paraphernalia and office supplies. Maybe it’s Valentine’s panic that inflicts you with temporary idiocy. You know you’re in trouble, and you could still stop at Target for slippers, but for some reason you think it’s a good idea to buy a retractable laptop mouse.

Your wife has a laptop. She would love a retractable mouse to go with it. I’m sure she practically swooned when she peered into the plastic shopping bag to reveal a treasure trove of cheap electronics. The disappointed look on her face makes you think that you should have gone with the broken love monkey. But what you should have done was spend some time thinking of a thoughtful gift.

It is not punishment enough that you slept on the couch last night. You will most definitely be getting the silent treatment from anywhere to 24 to the next 72 hours.

Your wife will never forget that you couldn’t even be bothered to stop at the grocery store for roses that would expire within 12 hours of being charged to your Visa, you big spender, you. You’ve created ammunition for your wife in arguments for years to come. You will have forgotten all about this Valentine’s Day and will find yourself in an argument where she claims you don’t pay enough attention to her, and she will pull the story of the time you went to the company gift shop to get her a Valentine’s present.

Then she’ll bring up the year you brought home Valentine’s wiper blades. And you think she’s done, but she brings up that teddy you bought her that was not only something you saw in a Britney Spears video, but also two sizes too large. By now you’re singing the Meow Mix theme song in your head, because you just can’t take it anymore.

Save yourself from a laundry list of horribly thoughtless gifts. You could have gotten a CD from a favorite band, a book from a favorite author. You could have schlepped to the mall and bought her a box of See’s candy. But it’s too late now. You’re in for make-up jewelry, and it better not be Wal-mart jewelry.