The Original Box Husband

I have many fond Christmas memories and one in particular….It had been a beautiful Christmas morning. Hubby and I managed to have a cup of coffee before the kids woke up. The tree was lit up with presents flowing from it like a rainbow. The kids had slept past six a.m. The little darlings had actually managed to read the tags on their gifts so they could tell which present had come from whom. We had gone to church together as a family. The financial impact hadn’t been too bad. Sitting silently in the heater room was a pile of boxes. All of the original boxes had been saved. This is the most important part of Christmas.

I had always been led to believe that Christmas was about the birth of the baby Jesus. I was wrong. My husband knew. “Save all the original boxes” is his mantra. We have eighteen years of original boxes from toys, appliances, furniture, and household items. Most of those items have been used and thrown away but I still have the original boxes. “You never know.” Came up frequently in conversations about original boxes.

My oldest son had gotten a CD player for Christmas. The box was huge. Fortunately for me I could fit a lot of original boxes inside the CD box. I tried to sneak this box into the recycling bin but the original box husband spotted my indiscretion and retrieved it. “Look what I found in the recycle bin. An original box.” He said grinning as if he had just found the mother lode. The CD Player had been removed, set up and was working just fine so I mistakenly tried to liberate the box. A few weeks after Christmas the player started making a grinding noise when it was opened. The original box husband retrieved the original box and proudly repacked the player and took it back to the store.

The saleslady in the store was much older than us. She was very nice in my Mothers kind of way. She opened the box. She stood there in a state of shock with her eyes bulging out of her head. Not only had original box husband put the player back in the original box, he had saved the original Styrofoam packing thingies. This thing was packed neater than when we took it out of the box. She broke into a huge grin. She couldn’t believe that he had packed it so thoroughly and from such a young man. The compliments came fast and furious. He had found an original box woman. Her husband of fifty years was not an original box husband. He was a “lets get this stuff out of here husband.” He was my kind of guy.

I have every original box from all of my children’s toys. That comes out to two children, eight thousand presents from their grandparents, a few from us, five thousand from their aunts and uncles multiplied by sixteen years. I have them all. The other day I decided to straighten the original box room. My husband keeps calling this room the attic, but I know better. I tried to liberate a few of the original boxes while hubby was at work. Wrong! He found them out in the recycle bin when he came home. I tried to explain that they needed to be with regular boxes doing what all of the other boxes were doing. No box wants to be ostracized for being different. He claimed that the boxes would be fine hanging out in the original box room with all of the other original boxes. They went back.

Then a few months after Christmas, I turned on the television and there was a show about collecting. The host was appraising items for the guests. I watched him give out a few estimates and then it happened. This woman had an old toy. It was maybe ten or fifteen years old. He went on and on about the toy and how it had been part of a real trend in toys. He commented on the value and how it was a shame that she didn’t have the original box. She did. The excitement was palpable. It added value to her toy. Substantial value. Original box husband was transfixed. I could see the wheels turning in his head. Eight thousand toys time twenty years, all with the original boxes. He ran to the original box room with breakneck speed, gathered up all of the original boxes for the toys that the kids no longer play with, and packed those toys with the precision and speed of Santa’s elves.

The transformation was complete. As he stood counting the money from the antique store he had become LET’S GO ON VACATION HUSBAND. I love a renaissance man.