Photos via Wikimedia Commons and Facebook.
In a tale someone will almost assuredly write a terrible Christmas song about, the bitter man who didn’t open a Christmas present for almost 50 years finally unwrapped that sucker and in doing so, he found love.Awwwww.OK, at the very least, he found a comic strip about love—which is good enough in trying times like these.To sum up the situation with brevity, 48 years ago Adrian Pearce received a gift from his then-girlfriend—who promptly dumped his ass. Pearce refused to open the gift or throw it out that Christmas and during the ensuing holidays he would pull it out and put it under the tree (until his wife kiboshed that tradition), but he wouldn’t open it. It was a whole thing. That all changed last year when Pearce made a Facebook post about it and the internet couldn’t get enough of his next-level pettiness. The story garnered Pearce international media attention and prompted him to self-publish a book about the gift.If you want a more in-depth explanation of how we got to this being a story, click the link below.The whole thing spurred Pearce to hold a charitable event where people could buy tickets to see him open the gift in a bar just outside of Edmonton this week. However, THERE’S A TWIST, it actually wasn’t Pearce who opened the gift but Vikki Allen, his ex-girlfriend—she had previously said she forgot what she got him all those years ago. The two had reconnected when the story blew up. Speaking to the CBC, Allen said she couldn’t be happier than with what Pearce did with the gift, but added (tongue in cheek) that it’s “a long time to hold a grudge. Really, it's a little worrisome.”So, in the end, the gloriously petty 17-year-old version of Pearce won as the man never did open the gift. Nevertheless though, on Thursday evening, with Pearce sitting in front of her, Allen finally opened the gift and inside found “Love Is…” a collection of comic strips by New Zealand artist and writer, Kim Casali (then Kim Grove) which features a naked man and woman doing something with a schmaltzy caption saying something like “Love is…. what gives you a smile from ear to ear.”Pearce told the CBC that the gift almost brought him to tears. Keeping in with his tradition of being just absolutely enamoured with the box and its contents, Pearce said that he is going to frame it. Speaking to the outlet, Pearce tried to explain his reasoning for keeping the gift for so long."It always reminded me of those long-ago days that were so innocent. All of us had our future ahead of us," he said. "Every year it brought me back to being 17 years old and innocent. And, you know, I hadn't been bashed around by life as it sometimes can."Inside the book, I’m not sure there’s any strip saying, “Love is… passive aggressively not opening a gift for almost 50 years,” but there probably should be.Sign up for the VICE Canada Newsletter to get the best of VICE Canada delivered to your inbox.Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.
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