The Art of Feigning Gratitude

"Happy Birthday!" Something in the way he sing-songed the greeting instantly gave me the feeling that Taylor had something up his sleeve.

"Hey," I said, closing the door behind me, a little exhausted, a little excited - a weird combination, but a long day at the office throupled with a birthday dinner and that lilt in my fiancé's voice made for odd bedfellows of emotion.

Taylor tucked his hair behind his ear as he leaned down to peck me on the cheek, and held out a hand to take my bag for me. "My, what chivalry!" I teased. 

"Only foreth thee, my loveth," he replied. I cracked and gave a solid chuckle. Even on the worst of days, he always finds a way to make me smile.

He stepped back, allowing me to kick off my shoes, shirk my coat, and collapse on the couch. 

After a few seconds of letting the couch absorb me into the ether, I sat up and looked at him. He looked surprisingly nervous but was hiding it well, masking it as almost child-like excitement. A kid that really wants you to watch them do a terrible, 3.6 dive into the pool.

I had a feeling his caginess had to do with something - was it dinner? Did we lose the reservation? We were planning on taking his car, did it break down? But… he seems a little too peppy for it to be a disappointment.

“So what time is dinner again?” I asked.

“I told you this morning,” he reminded me simply, “6:30. Why, do you want to relax a bit?”

Hmm. Maybe not that. Now I’m curious. 

“No, no I’m fine. Just on a crunch on the Feldspar design and our supervisor is micromanaging like crazy, had me redrawing the logo all day…” I refocus. “Okay, so like an hour? Want to watch that show till we need to leave? I think we were at the part - “

Taylor holds up a finger to tell me to wait and goes into the bedroom. He speaks, loudly, so I can hear over him rustling through his bedside table. "Before dinner, I want to give you your gift! I know you already know what it is, but I think you'll still be surprised!"

Ohhhh boy. My very tired brain began cranking out ways in which I'll still be surprised when he asked me what I wanted, and I told him. None were in the "good" category of surprises. Maybe this is how Mom felt when I told her the “surprise” that I dropped out of college to be an artist.

He emerged with a box far bigger than what I requested, but I assumed it would be a box-in-a-box situation. I smiled as he handed me the package, wrapped surprisingly well. He is a math guy; maybe math helps with wrapping gifts - art school definitely didn’t.

“Thanks,” I say as he sits down next to me. I give him a kiss and unwrap the box. Sure enough, it contained a surprising amount of bubble wrap and then… I started the show.

I put on the smile all artists know eons better than hand anatomy: the "it’s the thought that counts" charade. 

While everyone has the universal experience of receiving socks from grandma at age 6 when a toy would've obviously been better but Mum nudges you and you force a weak twitch of the face muscles and then turn around and pout, artists learn to perfect this faux-appreciation very quickly through endless repetition.

Did you draw something one time? Eh. Socks for you. Did you commit the fatal, personality-defining act of drawing something a few times? Well, strap in for a roller coaster of art-related gifts that never ends. Each loop around, you see the ride operator just laughing maniacally, throwing dollar-store brushes and Kleenex-thickness paper at you forever. New circle of hell just dropped.

Not a birthday nor a Christmas could ever pass without receiving that dreaded 50-something-piece set of “art” “supplies” that you wouldn't give a literal baby. The baby would make something that better embodies “art“ by shitting their diaper than through using a single piece of that set. 

Markers dryer than if you gargled food coloring at dawn and licked the page at dusk; watercolors in two shades - blindly neon and literal mud; pencil crayons with leads that snap off when a slight breeze happens in the next town over or if you look at it the wrong way.

One cannot be a true artist without having dozens of these things, a black box that tries to seem fancy by adding a little clasp so you can close it. And then forget about them for several decades, yet still in a condition so unused you could start dropshipping them for profit. 

“You can always give them to Goodwill!” What kind of good will is that? I wouldn’t force a prisoner of war to make do with one - if anything it breaks the Geneva convention for psychological torture.

But Mum would always say with her eyes, “It’s the thought that counts. Smile.”

Then would come the more "grown up" gifts. Perhaps a desktop easel, which is great if you paint. Not as much if you sculpt. Or draw. Or do anything that isn’t Bob Ross’ing it. Relatives only hear "into art" and spend a single-digit number of seconds thinking of an easy gift and go to Costco and walk by the doorbusters, grab it, and mentally check your name off of Santa’s List. I believe I have used my lovely gift from Aunt Rachel to paint exactly one landscape, which looks like a regurgitated burrito masquerading as a vague mountainside. Thought that counts.

If I'd kept every sketchbook I'd ever been given, I wouldn't have room on my bookshelf for even a single copy of National Geographic. With all the posters cut out. At least those are donations of good will; though I rarely if ever draw on paper, others do. Perhaps they’d like some. Thought that counts.

Then there's the family members that do actually try, but still fall just a bit short. That fake smile recipe calls for a tablespoon of appreciation but also an extra dash of disappointment. Add to taste. 

An actual full set of paint. 8 large tubes of the main colors. That’s fine, maybe I’ll call up Aunt Rachel’s easel and do another AI-art-level-uncanny landsca- Oh, they’re oil paints? Add pity to taste, cuz, uh, Aunt Debbie just spent three times the price to get me the only paint I’ll never use, when the same set of acrylics - probably about 4 inches to the left of what she grabbed - would’ve made an honest, easel-using artist out of me. So close. Thought that counts.

Craft kits. I can't crochet to save my life, but I wish I could sew those little dinosaur beer coozies, Aunt Sarah. I’m not a Japanese botanist, so none of those bonsai kits ever grow, thought adding “check on pile of dirt” to my daily routine has definitely helped me adapt to rejection. I’d love to make my own soap, if I were a damsel confined to a tower in the 600s and had no concept of enjoyment. Thought that counts.

I sure would love to be able to make an origami dragon, but my patience for a calming, serene art form flew out the window along with the first failed crane that absolutely died in my captivity. Maybe one day I’ll be able to sew a pillow or mold a candle or build one of those miniature room kits Amazon really thinks I’d enjoy. If only there were a way to tell both immense corporations and family members that I never want to see another tiny bookstore I know I’d ruin nor another tie-dye kit that will only birth crimes against fashion. Thought counts, etc. etc. 

Each thought, each item, each attempt flew through my brain as I prepared to be “surprised” by the only time I’ve given a specific answer to “What do you want for your birthday?”

I've never had to force a "thought that counts" expression this hard until today.

"Oh! Wow..." I said, removing a slender box from the larger box. It's the perfect shape and size for the one thing I asked for. But it doesn't have that signature bite of an Apple. It's got a small label in Japanese. I do not speak or read or write or understand Japanese. But I definitely know the language of "cheap art knockoffs". 

But hey, some of the best things I've ever bought came from some factory in China making millions by copy-pasting real life objects. Placing them into either a very-generic or a very-similar-to-the-real-brand box. Flip a coin on that one.

"I wasn't sure which one to get,” Taylor says. “I hope it's the right kind for.. uh, whatever you need it for.” He sounds far more unsure than I’m comfortable with - did he get a used one for $15 on Craigslist? 

Luckily he hasn't known me long enough to see through the "thought that counts" song and dance. 

Only one Christmas so far. It went surprisingly well - he managed to Do the Right Thing and simply get me a gift card for the local crafts store. One of the very few gifts that will please each and every artist in your life, or in your life enough that you're obliged to gift them twice a year. 

That, and our 3 month anniversary - that was a close one, but he did the next-best thing. From sculptor to painter to knitter to sword forger, no artist is complete without a goddamn idea. While "art prompt" books are a dime a dozen these days, at the very least it shows a level of consideration to that part of who we are as artists. We will get stuck. Prompts help. 

Taylor's a hard man to buy for. His hobbies don't involve a lot of expenses or luxuries one can gift. Coding, his job? He's already got a cupboard full of "Have You Tried Turning it Off And On Again?" mugs that have seen less usage than Linus OS, a joke I have been informed (by Taylor) is funny. 

He's a movie buff... and he became one by having a lot of movies. Maybe in the 90s I could go down to Blockbuster and find an action film he's never seen in the bargain bin and call it a day. Then go down to the local drug store in my ‘50’s poodle skirt for a milkshake before the sockhop. But now, Netflix exists, and I'm the one leeching off of his password. 

So for his birthday, I asked directly if there's anything specific he wanted/needed. He thought, then said he could use a new set of ski goggles, as he was about to go up north with the guys soon. Turns out they're kinda expensive. Not outrageous, but… honestly, is there anything about this particular piece of plastic in front of your eyes - such as sunglasses, which exist for one whole Canadian Loonie at the Dollarama - that makes it $75? Is it blessed by... dammit, I don't know any famous skiers. Shawn… Shawn White? Oh. Snowboarder. Close enough.

But, the precedent was set - I asked him outright what he wanted, he got it, and then he did the same for me. It's about what the surely diamond-encrusted goggles cost. I don't mind this arrangement at all - communication something something. Plus, it's a great way to avoid another sketchbook or set of paint that will collect dust until it chemically morphs into a structural part of the shelf you left it on in the Bush era. H.W. Bush.

I snapped back to the present Biden era. Finally, I opened the box of the knockoff Apple Pencil, hoping it would at least function for a week until it -

Oh.

Oh no. 

"What's wrong?" he asked, seeing the façade drop in real time. Then, when the shock passed, I simply doubled over in laughter. Still holding the offending object, I spent a solid minute nearly pissing myself, choking and/or having a stroke. Taylor kept asking why I was laughing, what's so funny, what's going on, do you need CPR, are you in need of a priest to exorcise you. Finally I let out a few final chuckles and gathered myself with some deep breaths.

"Did I really fuck up that bad?" he asked as I rushed into the bedroom to grab my iPad. I hand it to him. He looks from the pad to me in confusion. I hand him the $0.75 yellow school pencil topped with a big ole red delicious apple eraser. 

I didn't pick an idiot - despite his error, once he instantly made the connection, he too started laughing.

"You know what?" I said once we've both laughed to the point of nearly inducing appendicitis, "Of all the terrible gifts I've gotten in my life, this one is the best."

He smiled and shook his head. "I'm an idiot. I can't believe - Oh, god, I'm so dumb. Why - Why would you want this? I don't think I've ever seen you eat an apple let alone be, like, really obsessed with them. Can’t believe I paid $30 with shipping."

“You paid $30 for this?” I asked, incredulous.

“Smell it.”

“Smell it?”

“Smell it.”

I almost launched into yet another laughing fit after doing so. “Tay!” I exclaimed. “It smells like a green apple!”

“Yeah, I thought that was cool!” he replied.

I simply pointed to the bright red eraser. He closed his eyes, threw his head all the way back and groaned.

I wrapped my arms around him.

“You’re a saint for putting up with me,” he said. “I’ll get you the real thing. And leave a shitty review for a $30 kid’s toy.”

I chuckled. We kissed. 

After a moment, I said, “Don’t order the real Apple Pencil. I’ll get one. I like this one better. Thought that counts.”