Aaron Tracy

Mom, could you please try to be a little bit positive about this?

The night before my birthday this year, I had a late flight home from Los Angeles.

I arrive back in Brooklyn and go to bed without seeing anyone.

I sleep late into the morning.

Then I come downstairs, not having seen my family in several days.

And there's my wife and my two-year-old daughter, so excited to wish me a happy birthday and give me my gift.

So sweet to be reunited.

And they bring out this giant box.

My wife has been talking about it for weeks.

Would the box arrive in time?

She's been thinking about it and worrying about it.

It's the perfect gift.

She's been talking up how much I'm going to love it and how brilliant she is for coming up with the perfect present.

Very exciting buildup.

They give me this giant box and I open it and it's a big, beautiful, fancy framed photograph.

Something that looks like it should be in a museum.

It's of an old man in a black suit with a giant black dog next to him.

And I look at it like, oh, wow, this is really something.

And my wife says, yeah, it's Billy Wilder.

I looked so hard for it.