A Christmas Joke by Lillian

I will never forget Christmas morning a few years ago.  My daughter Paula was mad into jewellery. She kept hinting that she would like a ring or a bracelet.  She would leave the page open in the Argos catalogue, where the jewellery was and marked the ring she liked.  I decided to play a trick on her.  I asked my mother would she get me the ugliest ring she could find when she went into town.  Well, she got me one alright, it was the most hideous thing you ever set your eyes on.  My husband was in on the joke too.  We put the ring into a beautiful ring box.

On Christmas morning we all went into the sitting room to give out the presents.  My sons, David, Brian and my daughter Linda were the first to open their presents and were delighted with what they got.  Paula could not wait to open hers.  My husband and I kept watching her face.  She nearly dropped dead when she saw the ring.  I said to her, “What do you think of it”, she said it was lovely.  I said, “Your dad picked it out for you”

We kept watching her.  She put it back into the box.  I asked her was she not showing the others her ring.  As she was taking it out of the box, I saw her looking to see if it was stamped.  I asked her what she was looking for.  She said, nothing.  I said, “Give me the ring”, I looked at my husband and said, “This ring is not stamped”.  He took it from me and looked at it.  To her horror and the horror of the rest of the family, he threw it on the floor and stood on it.  He kept saying, “That fellow told me it was 9ct gold”.  They all thought he was gone mad. 

I started laughing and told her it was a joke.  She laughed herself.  Then we gave her a lovely bracelet.  I asked her what was going through her head when she saw the ring, she said, she wondered what her friend Debbie would say when she saw it.  Paula went over to my mother’s house to tell her what we had done.  My mother laughed and said. “I picked the ring”.