A Perfect Present

You know sometimes the smallest gifts coming from the right person with the right intentions mean the most. I will tell you what I mean.

I am doing a few small repairs around the house and needed to cut a piece of plywood on the table saw. It is just a piece of scrap that I need to temporarily plug a hole in a window frame. Even so,  I like to measure and mark my cut. I looked around my shop for a pencil and didn't find it in the usual place, I must have stuck it in my pocket last time I used it and didn't put it back (my bad, as the kids say).

Anyway I went to the box where all my new pencils are kept, I took the lid off of what was once an old chocolate box, took out a shinny new yellow pencil and went to sharpen it and WHAM!!! - the memories came flooding back.

You see, that chocolate box full of bright new yellow pencils were from someone a long time ago named Suzanne. She was just a little girl who had been helping My Sweetheart and she had gotten paid with a five dollar bill. Suzanne decided that what she wanted to do with her wages was get a nice present for me. She knew I was always looking for my pencil, so she thought the perfect gift for me would be a box of pencils.

She picked out and bought those yellow pencils with her own money, found the chocolate box with its lid, coloured and decorated the box, wrapped it and proudly gave me her present. I’ll never forget the sparkle in her eyes as she watched me open up her “perfect present”.