I have never been good at giving gifts. I, personally, know the joy of receiving a present that I truly wanted or found to be surprisingly awesome. Therefore, I know the disappointment that comes with a horrible gift. This is where the pressure comes from when I buy things for people. The reason this has come to a head for me is that recently I have found myself, through a lack of gift buying creativity, to be a book giver. For me this conjures up images of family Hanukah dinners where I tear open a woolly mammonth in wrapping only to find a tome on famous American Jews. And while there have been many, and quite a few interesting Jewmericans, even Jews start feeling a little bit anti-Semitic after passing the 796th page mark. This is the fear I live with and who I am afraid of becoming.
Now, fortunately my last book pick wasn’t in the same vein as the books of my past; it was Lord of the Rings, actually. But you never know. I could one day have a great selection of Dave Barry, Elmore Leonard and the latest from J.K. Rowling when all of a sudden I find that somehow I slipped in a Classic Chess Moves book into my bag of purchases. What would someone do with that if I gave it to them? You can’t read it. It probably would consist of pages and pages of diagrams. Who wants to get a book of blueprints? It would probably be greeted with the reaction that I know all too well. The almost imperceptible pause, the drawn out “heeeeeeey” and the forced smile that seems to say, “Good god, what goes on in your mind?”
Ideally, I would love to get people exactly what they wanted, but there are so few who actually articulate their gift desires. And very rarely have I been in the presence of someone with an impending event of some sort and heard them utter the words, “God, if only I could have a (blank, that does not exceed $75)!!” Do you know how rare that is? It’s happened twice, tops.
It would also be nice if I could give gifts that I find amusing, but after you reach a certain age people look at you funny if you keep giving water gun or rubber chicken key chains. I also would have thought that being older means I could find some new, exciting, funny gifts that would somehow be magically applicable to the age or situation of the recipient. That just doesn’t seem to happen. Maybe I just don’t know the right stores to go to. I’m still waiting for “Guy Gifts” to open up and answer all my prayers. But with my luck all they would sell are subscriptions to Maxim or some other pseudo-porn magazine, and everybody already has that. So people, stop getting subscriptions to Maxim and I shall be your leader to a world of almost-porn. The women may not like that, but one problem at a time people.