My husband and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary last weekend. I'm really excited about hitting this milestone because, in my mind, once you hit five years you officially don't have to return the wedding gifts if you end up getting divorced. Five years definitely gave your friends and family their money's worth. Also, five years is longer than I've ever committed to anything before, except for my rent-controlled apartment in New York, where I lived for six. But really if you are lucky enough to find a rent-controlled apartment in New York it isn't a matter of choice to stay or leave - not like with marriage.
So in honor of this grand occasion, my husband and I turned our noses up at the traditional five-year gift of wood and instead treated ourselves to an Evening Out.
Such a thing would not have been any big deal a few years ago. Certainly not worthy of a five year wedding anniversary. No, a few years ago such a momentous occasion would have been celebrated with a trip somewhere exotic in whose description appeared the words "swim-up bar." But we have a toddler now, so leaving the house after dark is about as special as it gets, and our options were limited to whatever we could find in our own city. So we opted to go with a dinner show that was the kind of thing you would only do on an occasion like this, on account of it cost more than a mid-size luxury sedan.
No, not really. And, no, I would not have knowingly spent that kind of money on a single evening. The ticket cost seemed extravagant, yet reasonably so for a special occasion. But then you get there and they say if you want a knife and fork with which to eat your steak, that will be extra. If you want bread it's extra, and there was a $10 per person "serving" fee which, it was explained carefully to us by our waitress, was not actually a tip, she didn't see a penny of that, no sireee, and she's not just bringing you your food, she's actually DANCING it over to you, which adds a nice dollop of whipped-cream guilt to your guilt pie.
Then there's the babysitter (turns out they don't work for 50 cents an hour like I used to) and parking and drinks and when all is said and done, maybe not a mid-size sedan but definitely one of those smaller ones that's a bit cramped in the back but no big deal if the kids are still small, they'd fit just fine.
But worse than the cost was the evening itself, which turned out to be one of those "audience participation" deals. This large and obnoxious woman would come out periodically throughout the evening, instigating simultaneous pangs of nervous nausea and excited anticipation. The first because her act consisted of pulling some poor sap from the audience and making a joke out of him for 30 minutes; the second because this was always followed by the next course. So the evening went: fun act, obnoxious woman, food; fun act, obnoxious woman, food. For five courses. I became like a Pavlovian dog, except instead of a bell it was an obnoxious woman and instead of salivating I'd get anxiety and a stomach ache.
I am terrified of being in the spotlight. The only time I find being in the spotlight acceptable is if it involves my getting a lot of gifts. Baby shower, wedding, birthday - that's fine. I can endure because I get stuff for my trouble. But if I am the one forking over my daughter's college fund in order to be fed and entertained, I expect someone ELSE to do the entertaining, not me. So I spent the majority of the evening on the verge of throwing up for fear the obnoxious woman would pick on me. I channeled my energy into throwing daggers at her with my eyes, sending silent bat signals of "Don't you DARE even LOOK at me, obnoxious woman! If you do I will barf on your ginormous sequined bosom and SUE you and THEN you'll be sorry" to the extent that I was utterly miserable, didn't enjoy much of the show and wasn't able to stomach any of the food. On the bright side I wasn't able to drink much which was good because drinks were the most extra of all the extras.
All in all the thing I liked most about the entire evening was the gift shop where pretty much every item consisted of sequins or rhinestones glued to various things you wore on your face or head, which was right up my alley. Nothing made of wood though, which would have been the only justification for parting with even more money.
Silly Tom couldn't understand why I was sputtering with indignation as we left. First of all, he doesn't mind that audience participation thing. He thinks it's FUN. Seriously! So he had no anxiety about the possibility of being plucked from the safe and comfortable darkness into the spotlight and was able to relax and enjoy himself. Also, he didn't know how much the tickets cost because I had made all the arrangements. When I bitched about the high price of our evening he conceded it was a "bit high" but not unreasonable for a special occasion until I clarified that the check he'd just signed was for the EXTRAS and didn't include the larger cost of the actual tickets.
I guess a nice anniversary gift would have been to keep that bit of information to myself, rather than ruin his night, too. But then, it wasn't made of wood anyway.
P.S. for those of you anticipating a joke involving giving/getting some wood on my anniversary, don't think I didn't IMMEDIATELY go there in my head. I just thought it was a little too obvious to actually write.
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