A gift fit for a bar owner.

My father’s birthday was a week and a half ago. Unfortunately, this year, he decided not to put a birthday list up, so neither my mom nor I knew what exactly to get him. Mom was cut a break thanks to the fact that Cirque du Soleil’s show Saltimbanco is coming to town in a couple of months, so her present to him was tickets to that show. For me, though, I was still a bit in the lurch. However, soon, an idea came to me.

Whenever I call Dad while on my way home from work, he answers the phone with, “Dirty Dave’s Bar and Grill… how may we serve you?” By this time, he usually already has gotten his scotch out and has had a drink or two. He’s also said recently that if he were to open a bar, he would call it Dirty Dave’s Bar and Grill. With that in mind, I did a bit of research, found what I was looking for, and placed an order… only to find that considering how long I had taken to figure it out, the gift would arrive well after his birthday. So, on his birthday proper, I warned him the gift would be late, but said no more.

During the time waiting for it to arrive, Mom happened to mention to me that his thoughts as to what it might be were completely wrong. He was assuming that it was a Star Wars DVD or something similar that was on backorder.

Anyway, the gift arrived yesterday. When I got home, I put the plain brown box on the kitchen table, and said, “Happy birthday.” He looked at me with a look of puzzlement, especially when he saw the label on the box that said “GLASS: HANDLE WITH CARE”. He opened it, and dug through the packing, and smiled when he saw two scotch glasses and two beer glasses. He unwrapped the bubble wrap from a scotch glass carefully… and then grinned in surprise and elation when he saw that the glass had the words “Dirty Dave’s Bar and Grill” etched on them. :-)

He’s since had one drink of scotch from one of the glasses, but then asked me tonight if I minded if he just kept them for show pieces, as they’re nice glasses and he didn’t want them to be damaged. Of course, they’re his glasses, so I told him I didn’t mind what he did with them. In any event, he’s extremely happy about them, so I think I can consider that a job well done.

On another note, I won’t go into details (though Louie for one will get a kick out of it), but seeing as she didn’t know my father’s name was Dave, Misty made an assumption as to what “Dirty Dave” referred to that was hysterical and somewhat true, if completely wrong. When I told Mom and Dad about it tonight, they damn near died laughing. I have to admit that I didn’t even think of that one…

All in all, I think Dad’s very happy with his birthday gift this year. I just hope I don’t have to outdo myself next year…