I couldn't have said it better myself

I pray for the end of the cycle of fear and hatred.

My Wife's Christmas Present

True to form, two days before Christmas I still didn't have a present for my wife. In my defense, she doesn't make it easy to figure out what she wants, so I usually have to ask her outright. The downside is that there is not much surprise. The upside is that I know I'm giving her something she wants.

Bear with me now, while I take a little detour. When I was finishing my PhD program and getting ready to move from Ohio back to New Mexico, I thought that I was going to start hiking and camping again. After all, I did when I lived there as a teenager and a Boy Scout. Motivated by this fantasy, when I needed to replace my Honda Prelude, I bought a full size Chevy pickup, complete with four-wheel drive, as well as the heavy-duty towing and off-road packages. The only thing it didn't have was a CD player (this was 1995, remember). My wife went along because it fit in with her own fantasy of doing major home remodeling and additions.

The four-wheel drive turned out to be handy in the snow while I was teaching at the Air Force Academy, and you never know how many friends you have until you own a pickup, but in six years of living in the Great Southwest, I never went camping, and our home improvement activities were essentially limited to painting. On top of that, when I left the Air Force I gradually came to the realization that I had been a closet liberal the whole time I was on active duty. When all was said and done, my 12 years driving the near-perfect gas guzzler have given me a guilty conscience bordering on neurosis. And if that were not enough to motivate me to get rid of the thing, the $75 fill-ups last summer would have done it. The only thing that kept me driving it as long as I did was that I was too busy/disorganized/lazy to sell it.

Then, a few days before Christmas, the solution came to me on the way to visit my in-laws in Ohio. It was in the form of three magic words on a billboard: Donate your vehicle. What a concept! Now I didn't have to worry about figuring out what a fair price was and dealing with the whole negotiation hassle to rid myself of my albatross. I just had to pick a charitable organization, sign over the title, look forward to the tax deduction, and stop living my hypocritical secret life. True, I still had to find myself a nice little gas-efficient used car and do the whole haggling thing, but at least half of the problem was solved.

It got better though. If you're paying attention, you've noticed that so far my a story about my wife's Christmas present seems to have a lot more to do with me and my truck. Well, if you haven't guessed it by now, this year she told me that she wanted a new car -- specifically a Toyota Prius. OK, let me get this straight. I donate my truck to charity, thereby ending my 12-years of environmental sin. I "give" my wife a Christmas present with a 5-digit price tag thereby qualifying for the Outstanding Husband of the Year Award (OHYA!). And that present just happens to be a hybrid vehicle, thereby shifting my family firmly into the environmental salvation column, complete with the accompanying tax credit.

It gets even better, though. If you're keeping up with the math, you'll note that at this point in the story we've made plans to dispose of one vehicle and acquire one vehicle, thus leaving us with no net change in the number of family vehicles. Bringing it home, I get my wife's "old" car -- a 2000 Toyota Avalon. It's gas efficient, it's safe, it's comfortable, and to top it off, it's got a CD player. It's the little things in life.

BTW, if you're in the market for a new car, you should at least test drive a Prius. After all, how many cars do you turn on with their power buttons instead of starting them with their ignition switches? My wife's has all the gadgets. It's like a computer that happens to have wheels. Did I mention that the Avalon has a CD player?