The Regift
By Aaron S. Birk
“Revenge (or Regift) is a dish best served cold.” —Edited Sicilian Proverb
Come on, admit it, you’ve done it, and you, dear reader, are guilty as charged. You have repackaged a gift you didn’t really want and given it to someone else! That sinful regifting of an item so hideously boring that you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy but yet would gladly repackage for your very best friend.
This is an age-old tradition. A tradition that earlier this past year was perfected into a literal art form by director and full-time math teacher Brant Wilkinson of Pacific Grove, California. In the annals of historical revenge it may not be possible to overcome the savage abuses done to a poor man, Mr. Corren Hileman, and his wife Ronna of Ashland, Oregon. That’s where I come in.
Brant Wilkinson was a simple, quiet man content with teaching his classes in mathematics—until last Christmas. You see, a student presented Mr. Wilkinson with a gift, or, more to the point, a regift. A pale purple candle that sent him into a constructive rage, or, more to the point, a murderous regifting frenzy.
The lonely candle itself was chock full of brilliant boredom and had been passed between a multitude of people in a fit of chronic regifting. This obviously well-planned regifting of the candle by Wilkinson’s friend Mr. Hileman via a student sent poor Brant over the edge, and a plot began to take form in his mind—a plot marinated in sweet revenge.
I had been training with Brant Wilkinson and his friend Michael Hedgepath at Aikido Monterey on 10th Street for some time when Mr. Wilkinson approached me with a proposal.
“Would you like to be in a movie?” he had asked simply.
I accepted, and what followed was a cascade of espionage and intrigue so involved that fully disclosing the details would bark the doors off a monastery. What I can give you is a brief profile of Mr. Wilkinson’s victim, Corren Hileman.
TARGET PROFILE: THE HILEMAN FAMILY
Corren Hileman and his wife Ronna live in Ashland, Oregon where they own a quaint bed-and-breakfast establishment called The Shrew’s House, so named for the brilliant Shakespeare Festival that is active in Ashland for the better part of a year. The Hilemans have one daughter, Alex, who would turn out to be a crucial part of Mr. Wilkinson’s diabolical plan.
Corren Hileman reviews movies for submission to the Ashland Film Festival, and the office for the Ashland Film Festival too would prove to be instrumental in Mr. Wilkinson’s coup de grace of all Regifts. Corren Hileman is also very proud of his ability to make pastries and muffins.
The enraged Mr. Wilkinson had a simple plan…kind of. We would have to make a movie of his own regifting containing key scene elements from Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” and “Psycho.” That film would have to depict scenes from both films but yet culminate in scenes also depicting the discreet placement of the candle in the Shrew’s House Bed & Breakfast in Ashland, Oregon, a mere eight hours’ drive away.
After that, the film would then have to be edited and then sent through the Film Festival office as a submission to insure success. Mr. Wilkinson would also have to slowly call and communicate with both the Ashland Film Festival Office and the Hileman household during this process to bring both the Film Festival Office and the Hilemans’ young daughter Alex into the nest of agents working with us.
I would then be responsible for convincing my girlfriend to act in the film and would also have to deal with the neurological trauma of being stabbed with a plastic butter knife by a man wearing an Alf mask.
This process would take us one year to complete. As you can tell, anything but simple.
The bomb was dropped over Thanksgiving of the recently expired last year. Alex Hileman, the then operative, reported that the “package” had been received by her father. What followed is an insurmountable amount of expletives on Mr. Hileman’s part, not to mention the shame at being bested at the world’s oldest game—regifting.
“It took us way too long to figure out how involved Brant’s ruse was,” Corrin Hileman said later.
The would-be artist from Ashland, Oregon had one last thing to say. “I guess we’ve bitten off more than we could chew.”
With that, Mr. Brant Wilkinson happily walked into the sunset, and tripped in victory.
If you’d like to see the movie itself, you can stream it at YouTube by searching: Maniac: The Regifting.
