It’s Christmas Eve. You get a text, from the object of your affection: “Hope your Christmas is a merry one,” it reads.
This text reeks of a spam text: the kind you can send to all fifteen of your closets friends, plus your mom and little brother. You get excited when you see his name on your phone. This excitement is quickly followed by disappointment, then anger, than an urge to throw said phone, preferably at him, but any living object with a head would make a suitable target.
But is this a fair reaction? I think there are two ways to look at it: a) Making someone’s top fifteen list ain’t bad, and b) Asking to be number one is actually asking for quite a lot.
If he had said, “Merry Christmas. Though I don’t act like it, and most the time act quite contrary, I actually love you, Erin” it’d probably freak me out. Then again, is including if not the “I love you,” but at the very least my name, really that demanding? Is it so much to want to know it was me, and only me, he was thinking about, in the thirty seconds it takes to send a text?
Maybe. Because numbers two through fifteen get spammed, that’s asking to be number one: the text equivalent of a first choice. And after knowing a person for just six months, or a year, or even six years; that’s asking for an awful lot. With number one comes responsibility, commitment, desires to be met, or at the very least, the giving of an awesome Christmas gift. And I didn’t get him anything.
Life’s no Love Actually reenactment, and even though there was more I wanted to say, (“I didn’t ask for anything for Christmas because all I want is you”), I replied, “And to you, a Merry Christmas,” rest assured I made the top fifteen, or twenty, or however many friends he had in his address book. And for now, that’s good enough.
Besides, I lie. He’s not the only thing I wanted for Christmas. I also wanted an iPhone, and at least I got that this year.
