Jodi's Christmas Present

Warning: Spoilers. If you're Jodi, or one of her friends, stop reading NOW. Or I will get ornery...

Anyway...

I was over at Renee's Midwest Bloggin, and she made some reference to Geddy Lee. I saw that it was a link, and being a rush fan, I clicked it. Then she ranted about how much she doesn't like Rush.

But anyway, the blog entry that it linked to was really about earworms, or those twiddly little song hooks that stick in your head and don't go away. She also asked what earworms we'd had lately. And I'd had one, tonight, in fact. It's kind of a long story, but I think it was kinda fun.

I was at Greywhale (CD shop) with my wife. We were doing some Christmas shopping, mostly looking at DVDs and video games for the boys. And I suddenly saw a Howard Jones compilation CD. All the good ones were there, like "Life in One Day", "No-One Ever Is To Blame", and "Things Can Only Get Better", etc...

I HAD to buy it for my wife for Christmas. Not only does she love HoJo, but his concert in Park City was one of our first dates.

So, I'm thinking, how can I buy this without her knowing it? My first thought was to sneak it around the store under my coat. No, that would get me arrested. Finally, I thought, rather than work against the staff of the store, I would enlist their aid. "Hey, dude, hide this behind the counter. And don't let that lady over there see it!" He smiled a knowing smile and took the CD.

Then I walked over to my wife and she asked me something about buying this or that video for the boys. As I reached to take the video out of her hand, she pulled it back. I could see there was something else under that video, but I couldn't make out what. Obviously a present for me...

I smiled. "So should I leave the store first, or you?"

It's a song we dance to every Christmas.

But then, in the car, I started reminiscing about the concert, and the hook from "Only Get Better" started going through my head. It took everything I had not to hum, whistle, or otherwise vocalize the song, because I knew that if I did, she'd know instantly what I'd bought.

It was tough, but I pulled it through!

And anyways, I was going to just post this story as a comment on Renee's blog, but Blogger got all wiggy on me and started throwing error messages. So, I put it on my blog instead!

MRKH
Mark Hansen
http://markhansenmusic.com