Give yourself a gift for Christmas

Bought himself a gift, wrapped it, tagged it as "from ", his wife. Then he opened it on Christmas and oooo'd and aaaaah'd over "It's just what I wanted!" (black pyjamas with no pyjama-ey designs, fire trucks or basset hounds. (These sound very like a pair of pyjamas my father had back in the Fifties!)

I don't know how good a "sneak" this idea is. The wife knows what he did, the husband knows she knows, there is no constraint on her saying anything. If they leave it an open secret that's their problem; but the husband hasn't sneaked anything past her.

I wish I had given myself presents for Christmas. Too bad that with my upbringing it never occurred to me that that was possible. Dennis said it: You owe it to your CHILDREN to teach them to respect you. When they're little, you take them shopping for the other parent. If you're a single parent, you take them shopping for YOU, too. I wish he had said: if the other parent is a mean sonofabitch named Stephen Sakamoto, you'll have to take them shopping for YOU too. He didn't. I didn't think of it, and that turd taught the children that mom deserves nothing on Christmas. Only the dad and his parents deserve anything.

Nice, eh?