Unidentified Flying Gifts

I'm not asking you to marry me. I'm asking if you sent me an egg cooker.

I recently received a mysterious package. I had not ordered it. I excitedly opened said package to discover an egg cooker! I love eggs and was very pleased with this unexpected gift. I thought I knew who had sent it, but the person in question did not respond to repeated requests to identify himself.

Finally, he answered. The thing that bothers me about email and text vs. phone is that people will often not answer a simple question that they would have to answer on the phone. I’m not talking questions like, “Will you marry me?” I’m talking about, “Did you send me an egg cooker?”

It’s interesting how often I get gifts and can not identify the sender.

The first time I remember this happening was 2015. I was living in an anarchist collective house to save money while in grad school full time (bad idea walking but that’s another story.) It was Valentine’s Day and a beautiful bouquet of flowers was delivered. Needless to say, anarchists do not receive flowers, so the only Democratic Socialist or whatever I was at the time in the house was obviously the intended recipient.

I called the guy I was dating to thank him. He was delighted that I had received the lovely flowers.

He became progressively less delighted as I described them. They were not, in fact, the flowers he had sent. He had sent a dozen roses. The flowers I had received included roses but also some other pretty little flowers.

I love flowers, should anyone ever need to know. Especially flowers that are not toxic to cats.

The guy I was dating assumed that the flowers had been sent by some other guy I was dating without his knowledge. This put me in a bit of a rose-infused pickle.

I searched my memory banks to see who might have sent the flowers. I called around.

Eventually I landed on the culprits. My parents! They are so sweet! Thank you, parents.

Problem solved. Did the guy I was dating believe me when I told him that it was my parents? I don’t know. Probably not.

Then it happened again this year. Valentine’s Day. I received a beautiful rose plant and a little bear. No card. What the hell happened to the little to and from cards that used to come with gifts? Did they go the way of civility in this century?

The person who was most likely to be implicated in giving me a Valentine’s gift had already given me a cute slightly bigger bear, who now sits on one side of my bed opposite the mystery bear. Thank you, person who gave me bear, and thank you for all the other stuffed animals too. It’s a veritable zoo around here.

I over watered the rose plant and it died and I cried. I never did figure out who sent it. I have a suspicion, but it’s never been confirmed.

The moral of the story is: if you send me a gift, please either make sure it has a to-from card or send me an email or text or for heaven’s sake just pick up the blanking blanking phone (why does no one talk on the phone anymore?) and tell me that you sent it!

Or better yet, become a paying subscriber like the person who sent the egg cooker. I have enough stuffed animals already.