Wedding Weekend Recap Part 2: The Case of the Seashell Toothbrush Holder

I’d love to go on and on about how wonderful the entire weekend was.  I’d love to tell you about how much fun I had, and I’d love to relate some of my favorite wedding stories.  But I have more important things to discuss…

Erica and I arrived home on Sunday, and after a desperately needed afternoon nap, we sat down to open some of our gifts.  A money envelope here, a set of wine glasses there, and everything was proceeding pretty much as expected…until we opened the seashell toothbrush holder. 

Erica was indignant.  “Who would get us something like this?” she wondered?  “What kind of gift is a toothbrush holder?”  I asked if there was a card.  There was, and I read it aloud: 

“Dear Erica and Joshua,

I was so delighted that your parents invited me to your wedding.  At my age it is a treat to see young love.

 

This toothbrush holder is near to my heart.  It belonged to my grandfather, then to my father who kept it in his vacation home on the Jersey shore.  I was to pass it down to my children, but since Jonas and I never had any of our own, I am passing it down to you.  Use it with love always.

 

Mazal tov!

Always,

Eslma Mole”

  

Our first reaction was to think about what a touching gesture this was.  Erica even said she felt ashamed for having reacted the way she did.  But a moment later, as we looked at the card again, we said to ourselves, “Who the hell is this person?!”  We couldn’t make out the spelling of the name – and we thought we had all of the elderly guests accounted for.

 

I was certain this person was not from my side of the family, so Erica called her grandmother first, then her mom, and then her dad.  Nobody knew anything about the mysterious Eslma Mole.  How do you even pronounce that, anyway? 

 

Finally we decided to take another look at this family heirloom and, to our surprise, realized that it was not, in fact, an heirloom at all.  There were three clues:

1) “Better Homes and Gardens” is printed on the bottom.  2) It says “made in China ” which would not have happened if it was as old as Mrs. Mole claimed, and 3) there was still residual sticky-ness from where the price tag had recently been removed.

 

We knew that that we were the victims of an extraordinarily elaborate gift hoax, and that, most likely, Eslma Mole did not even exist.  We looked at the name again trying to rearrange the letters to see if we could determine who was behind this practical joke. 

 

Unfortunately, we came up with nothing.  We’d love to tip our hats to the perpetrator of this hoax , but nobody we’ve spoken to knows anything about the case of the seashell toothbrush holder.  If any of you, dear readers, have information regarding this matter, please email the tipline at: thegroomwithaview@gmail.com.

 

Any tips leading to the identification of Eslma Mole will be published, upon our return from Bali – for which we leave this evening.  Until then, as they say in Bali , sampai jumpa.