My exwife bought me a birthday present and it only cost me $611

Much to her chagrin, there are few people who know me better than my exwife. I suppose many former couples are like this, especially when sharing children means that you can’t quite never talk again after things go south. We have a great relationship, probably as good as people in our situation could have. This is the story of how her kindness cost me a whole lot of money.

One of the things Christine knows about me is my love for surfing history, especially via a movie called Riding Giants, which documents the history of big wave surfing. Back when I had a fear of flying, I’d drink a bottle of wine and watch the movie the night before wheels up. In a post from earlier this year, I credited famed big wave surfer Laird Hamilton’s stoic outlook on life in helping me finally conquer that particular fear:

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that my birthday was last month. If you know me well, you know that I’ve long struggled with birthdays and holidays in the ten years since the boys’ mom and I split up. I’ll save those thoughts for another day, but know that in general, I’ve had difficulty in accepting gifts from my boys or anyone else. Christine, mind you, has always thought that was nuts, and generally ignored me about that anyway. Though I do think she probably got a kick out of how this particular story played out.