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Give It To Me
Ah, ‘tis the season of giving gifts, of receiving gifts, and
of attempting to determine exactly what the gift is and what the giver meant by giving it to you. "Is this
a new-fangled remote control or an electronic hair removal device? Does she think I’m a lazy slob with too much
body hair?"
It’s not a simple thing, this holiday gift-exchange. First
you have to understand the basic rules:
1. The
value of the gift you give must be equal to or greater
than the average value of the gift the intended recipient gave you last year and the value of the gift they will
probably give you this year, minus the price of the ribbon, divided by how long you had to stand in line at the
post office to mail it, plus the interest rate on your Visa card.
2. You
should never re-gift someone with any item they have
given you in the past five years, unless there are incontrovertible signs of memory loss. Theirs, not yours.
3. If
unsure about size, always buy a "Medium."
If you give a gift that is too big, you imply the recipient is fat. On the other hand, if you give a gift that
is too small, you imply the recipient is fat. It doesn’t matter if the gift is a blouse, a pair of socks, or a
3-bedroom house in the suburbs. Always go for "Medium."
4. If
you’re not sure a gift is appropriate, make another choice.
This will prevent you from buying your boss a surprise basket from Polly’s Peignoirs and Porn Shoppe and keep
you from purchasing your spouse a personal desk-top shredder (which may come in too handy during the divorce proceedings.
"Financial records, what financial records?")
Some people try to make your task easier by providing a list of things they’d like to receive for the holidays.
These are the people who still haven’t gotten over the whole "Santa is not real and neither are those letters
in Playboy" discussion they had as a child. The problem with buying gifts for list-makers is that usually
their lists are boring -- "Socks, slippers, and pajamas." Why can’t they by these things for themselves
like the rest of us?
If you’re not working off a list, your own gift-giving style
will emerge. There are five basic styles:
The "It’s
What I Want" Style – If you’ve ever given your
brother an aromatherapy diffuser or your niece a WWF video game, you fall into this category. The rationale is
two-fold: (1) I want it, so it must be good and others will also like it; and (2) I want it, so if the recipient
for some reason – death or poor taste, for example -- doesn’t want it, then I’ll get it back!
The opposite approach is something I call the "It’s Cheap Crap I’d Never Let In My House, So I’m
Sure She’ll Love It!" This is the gift-giving
style of people who think they are better than the rest of the world. Namely, most of my relatives.
For the truly clueless, there’s the "You’re A Woman 30-65, So I’m Sure My Wife Would Enjoy The Same Things
You Do" Approach. This is the polling approach to gift-giving in which the shopper surveys every person
in the store who fits the target demographic. Bill Clinton uses this approach, which explains why last year Hillary
got a T-shirt emblazoned with "70% of Americans don’t care what the President does in the privacy of the Oval
Office!"
Really creative people who subscribe to lots of catalogs often
use the "I Bet They Don’t Have One
of These!" Approach. Last year, one of my friends
who is a follower of this gift-giving style, gave me a pair of reflexology socks. I thought they were cute until
one day I pressed the spot the pancreas spot and three people died. Well, it’s the thought that counts.
Last, but not least, there’s the "It’s All They Have Left"
style. If you’ve ever given a loved one a bottle of Wite Out and a package of airline peanuts, you know who you
are.
Or you could just forgo giving gifts at all. Chalk it up to voluntary simplicity, environmentalism, or the inability
to afford both gifts and therapy.
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