“And I would have gotten laid, too, if it wasn’t for you meddling florists!”
Haikus: Simple. Elegant. Minimalistic. Mathematical. And pretty much guaranteed to make a girl’s heart swoon…even when loaded with drug references.
Case in point: the single most important written work of mine, the Facebook message haiku that hook-lined-and-sinkered the hotty who would eventually become Mrs. Boss Lady.
Long story short, back when we were merely neighbors, I had jokingly referenced cocaine while Facebook flirting. Attempting to respond sarcastically, she instead inadvertently challenged me to somehow make the use of controlled substances…romantic.
Well, methoughts that to be not enough of a challenge, so I decided to make it harder by constraining my literary prowess to stanzas of 5, 7, & 5 syllables.
Yada, yada, ya, and 3 months later this ended up on a wedding program:
Fast-forward to a year and half after that. I’m still the sappy, hopeless romantic wordsmith that she fell in love with those many moons ago. I’m so lovestruck, in fact, that I get the idea to surprise her with an 18-month celebration. And what better way than to have flowers delivered to her workplace?
Now, it turns out that I can be unhealthily shy when it comes to talking on the phone, so instead of calling up a local florist, I found it much easier to use 1-800-FLOWERS.com. No human interaction required!
But wait! You can include a message…but there’s a limit of 175 characters. Hmm, sounds like a job for Haiku Man.
Challenge accepted!
I worked my ass off crafting the following masterpiece, proud of myself for clocking in exactly at 175 characters. I couldn’t wait for her to come home that evening, swooned off her feet and on to her back all over again:
Happy Anniversary Meet-heart1One of my pet names for her.
sweet rest comes softly
for my heart each night it lies
next to my beloved.
18 mths & we've
only just begun to see
our love blossoming.
happy 1.5
years of loving and learning--
dinner's on me t'night.
Love, Mee-Jay2One of her pet names for me.However, the woman who came home that evening was…thoroughly confused.
“Uh, I’m not sure, but I think your brother sent me some flowers today.”
“What? No, that was–wait. What are you even talking about?”
“Yeah, it was real weird. I got some flowers delivered to me, and they came with this note:”
“DAMMIT. THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A HAIKU! Of course, you’re confused–the florist totally butchered it! All my hard work got turned into a babbling nonsensical stream-of-consciousness.”
“It was you? Then why is it signed ‘Jay’?”3Jay is my brother’s nickname…who happens to have the same first name as her clingy ex-boyfriend that immediately preceded me.
“F*cking florist. It was supposed to be ‘Mee-Jay’. I guess Mr. Know-It-All decided that ‘Mee-Jay’ couldn’t possibly be somebody’s name.”
*Thinks for moment.*
“At least he didn’t change it to ‘Love Me, Jay’…”
The point of the story is you can’t trust the internet and your local florist-who-minored-in-English-in-college to not team up to make your wife think she’s being stalked by a raging, emotionally-needy narcissist who may or may not be a brother-in-law or an ex-boyfriend.
Also, 18-months anniversaries apparently aren’t a thing, so you might as well lower your, um, “expectations” right now, bud.
Content created on: 14 October 2020 (Wednesday)
Footnotes & References:
LOL, that was way butchered. Plus, they had to capitalize every word
You have no idea how much time I wasted trying to come up with a title that was a play on florist/butcher. You may not be surprised to learn that I didn’t even recognize those words as my own when I first saw the card.