Eighteen and a half years ago, to celebrate our wedding, scores of wonderful guests gave us scores of wonderful gifts. Among those wonderful gifts was a teapot. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the teapot, it was a serviceable, not totally unattractive, typical, stainless-steel, late-nineties-era, big-box-store teapot.
We were informed later, however, that this teapot was not to be kept. Before it was given to us, it had been gifted at many other weddings and had become a sort of gag gift, an inside joke, a hot potato amongst some of our friends.
We noted this, tucked it into storage waiting for the next appropriate wedding, and promptly forgot about it. For eighteen years.
During this pandemic, however, we have been organizing our storage room and the teapot happened to resurface. On that same day, Facebook informed me it was the birthday of one Stacey, a member of one of the couples who had owned the teapot right before us. Did I mention that Stacey and her husband Chris live half a mile from our house?
It is obvious: it is time to reactivate the teapot. This time as a birthday present.
I get some white paper and a red bow and wrap the teapot. I get a wig and some sunglasses for an anonymous delivery (in case they have a doorbell cam). Then I write a note on the paper from the perspective of the teapot:
"I have been searching for you all these years. So long estranged. But now we are together again. Happy Birthday, Stacey! -me
I hop in our van and head to their house. I’m preeeeetty sure I know which one is their house... You see, we had just recently reconnected with these old friends at our 20 year summer camp reunion and discovered that we lived so close together. Chris had described to me where they lived but I hadn’t gotten an exact address. So I have some doubts, but I’m feeling pretty good — the house is maybe a little too dark for a birthday party but it’s a pandemic and the kids might be in bed by now, and the style of house matches what I’ve seen on their social media posts, and what little I can see inside could probably live up to Chris’s high aesthetic standards. This is probably their house...
I quietly open the front gate and slink up to the front door. I set the box on the bench and firmly press the doorbell. But as I turn to run, I see, no doubt about it, in the front window: a cat. I have seen plenty of Instagram posts of their dog but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat.
I sprint around the corner, jump in the van, still in wig and shades, and drive past the front door to see if I can see anyone opening the door. I do. A woman’s silhouette is leaning out the partially opened door, scanning the yard. But the glimpse is too quick to be sure if it is Stacey or not.
When I get home, I message Chris’s sister, Aimee: “Do Chris and Stacey have a cat?”
The definitive reply: “They do not have a cat, Chris is crazy allergic.”
Shoot!
I resolve to return the next day to see if I can retrieve the present and redeliver it to the correct house, which, Aimee has informed me, is three houses away, on the other side of the street. This time I bring Kaleia to do the redelivery.
My daughter, in a wig, ready to (hopefully) redeliver the teapot.
I knock on the door. No answer. I ring the doorbell. No answer. Oh, geez. The options here are:
- I’ve come at a time when no one is actually home — but the world is in quarantine and it’s after typical work hours so this is unlikely;
- The people inside are busy, maybe on the toilet — possible; or,
- This person, having received a really weird package the night before is afraid to come to the door — I’ll let you decide on the likelihood.
(Feel free to scroll back up and look at that package... First imagine that your name is Stacey and it’s your birthday. A little weird, maybe, but you’d probably open it, curious to know what an anonymous friend has brought. Now imagine that it’s NOT your birthday and no one in your house is named Stacey and that package shows up with a ring-and-run under cover of darkness...)
I go back to the van, and write a note to leave, apologizing for the mishap and giving them my phone number to arrange for me to come pick it up soon.
All will be well, I think. The present will be a day or two late for Stacey, but all will be well.
A couple hours later, I’m eating dinner with my family and my phone vibrates:
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| A text from the unintended recipient: "Hi Brian, I'm the person at the house where you dropped off the present last night. Your present did scare me, it was so random and anonymous, and I was afraid to even touch it. I called the Beaverton police and they came and took it away, and they told me they threw it out. Sorry to not have better news. 😬 You could try calling them to see if it is really gone? |
I did NOT expect this teapot story, ~20 years in the making, to end with law enforcement getting involved!
To all those involved in the teapot hot potato of the early 2000s (paging: Darian... were there other couples?) I’m sorry we broke the chain. Kind of. Sorry not sorry. This seems like a fitting end.
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Postscript – that night, on the verge of sleep, I burst out laughing again, this time imagining the anticlimax of the police opening the present only to see that it is just a run-of-the-mill teapot with nothing nefarious about it.
