SEND ME NO FLOWERS

I used to use that Internet site 1-800-FLOWERS.COM to send flowers on occasion. Convenient, fast, and most of the time the local florists who actually delivered the product at the other end did a decent job.

But not any more. Not after one of their little “promotions” backfired.

Most of these florist-and-seasonal-gift operations are good at sending reminders. They’re like Major Charities: if you ever did business with ’em in the past, they never forget you. Try to dodge that Alumni Association solicitation, or that thing from United Way. Likewise, try to dodge the pile of e-mails from 1-800-FLOWERS.COM.

But they sent me a “reminder” the other day that I did not appreciate…and She Who Must Be Obeyed appreciated it even less.

Via snail mail, they sent a nice card, reminding me that I had sent a gift (presumably flowers) to someone about a year ago – would I like to remember that occasion again?

Sounds pretty routine - but here’s the problem:

First, the person I supposedly sent this gift to was not someone whose name I recognized.

Second, the person I supposedly sent this gift to was not someone whose name SWMBO recognized – and she’s the one who opened the letter.

Third, the person I supposedly sent this gift to was female.

The way I discovered all this was through the phone call I got at the office just as I was about to leave. It was She Who Must Be Obeyed, and there was a definite frosty tone in her voice.

“Who is this ‘Kim Holland’?” she asked. For that, indeed, is the name that was on the Reminder Card.

Well, I don’t know any Kim Holland…but SWMBO wasn’t buying it. It’s like asking someone (other than Michael Jackson), “Did you molest that child?” Whether you’re guilty or innocent, you are going to deny it: you are screwed no matter what. So now I’m driving home to deal with a pissed-off wife.

It gets better. While I was driving home, SWMBO Googled the name “Kim Holland” to see whether this person had an Internet footprint. Turns out she has an Internet footprint the size of Godzilla’s: she is, apparently, a Figure of Note in the Adult Entertainment Bidnis. After I got home, just for shits and grins, I clicked on one of the links that came up in that Google search. Bejus! They was pictures of cooters ’n’ wee-wees, all next to each other ’n’ such!

And now I’m having to deal with a pissed-off wife whose husband, for all she knows, is busy sending flowers and/or chocolates to a Fuckflick Floozy. Sweeeet.

Of course, as soon as I got home, I called 1-800-FLOWERS and had them check their records. Sure enough, they could find nothing to indicate that I had ever sent anything to this particular individual. While the young man on the phone was busy reassuring the Missus that her husband was not, in fact, an asshole, he observed that this Miss Holland apparently received flowers and what-not from a lot of people. A lot of lonely, frustrated people, I’ll wager. The reminder card had - no surprise to me - been a mistake.

The last thing I ordered from 1-800-FLOWERS, it seems, was a bouquet of flowers, a little less than a year ago. (Since then, I’ve given my business to Proflowers.com, who provide a higher-quality product.) Who got the bouquet?

SWMBO, of course. It was for her birthday, which falls on the last day of August. Alas, no good deed shall go unpunished.

Well, she has finally stopped giving me the stink-eye, but I just know I will be catching shit over this little episode for years. Every time she wants to stick it in and twist it, all she will have to say is, “Kim Holland.”

And thank you, 1-800-FLOWERS. Thanks ever so much!