As everyone in the Christian world knows, this is the season when we’re all supposed to be making a little better effort in the areas of peace and goodwill towards all our earthly brothers and sisters. And as if that weren’t enough, it’s also that time of the year when men are supposed to somehow, out of the blue, come up with a Christmas gift idea that won’t make their significant other wish she had gone ahead and married that other guy who her mother liked better.
Anyway, speaking for men in general and me in particular, picking out the perfect Christmas present for a person of the opposite sex is mostly pure torture. No matter how hard I try (and I admit that my effort has been questionable from time to time) I always seem to get it wrong. I’ve tried just about everything, including jewelry, clothes, stuff that smells good, appliances, cute little animals (both stuffed and alive), sexy underwear, books, and, of course, cold hard cash. But with a very few exceptions, the result has always been pretty much the same, which is usually a forced half-smile and a polite, unexcited “Thank you, dear.”
In fact, as I look back over the years, with the possible exception of a watch my wife still wears from time to time, a Punky Levi jacket my daughter liked, and a pair of sunglasses an old teenage girlfriend saw and fell in love with (I had the good sense to go back and spend my last few dollars on them), all my gift ideas for women can pretty much be summed up in one word, substandard.
A few years ago, though, I accidentally stumbled upon what I believe to be a poorly understood and not enough appreciated fact, that most women have a little Imelda Marcos in them. In other words, I’ve learned that a pitiful gift-picker-outer like me can still manage to keep my head above water at Christmas time if I just go down to Nine West or some other upscale women’s shoe store, purchase a gift certificate, wrap it nicely, and stick it under the tree.
I was mentioning all this to a friend of mine the other day (I’ll call him Steve) and he was having a pretty hard time getting his head around it.
“You really bought your wife and daughter shoes for Christmas?” he asked me in disbelief.
“That’s right,” I answered proudly.
“But how do you even know what kind of shoes to get them? I mean, there’s a million different kinds of women’s shoes out there. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Oh, no, no,” I explained. “I don’t actually pick out the shoes, I just purchase the gift certificate.”
“But isn’t that a little impersonal?”
“You would think so,” I admitted, “but when it comes to shoes, women seem to be willing to cut men a little slack.”
“How so?”
“Well, and this is only my opinion,” I said, “but when a woman opens up a present and sees it’s a gift certificate for a pair of shoes, it seems to me that before she can get really good and mad at you for not being more original or thoughtful, she starts thinking about how much she could really use a new pair of shoes and how much fun she’s going to have shopping for them. Plus, she starts thinking about an outfit or two she has in the closet which only need a good pair of new shoes to make them just perfect, and before you know it, she’s giving you a kiss on the cheek and sincerely thanking you for the gift certificate.”
“That may be true,” said Steve without much conviction, “but I still don’t think I could just give my wife a gift certificate. Have you ever just asked your wife or daughter what kind of shoes they want and then went out and bought them yourself? Wouldn’t that be better?”
“Once again,” I said to my friend, “I think you’re missing the whole point here. You see, by giving a gift certificate, not only do you not have to do any of the shopping and standing in lines yourself, but you can’t screw things up by purchasing the wrong thing. And believe me, there’s no way you can actually figure out what kind of shoes a woman wants anyway. They just seem to more or less know them when they see them, if you know what I mean. Plus, they use code words to describe the darn things. For instance, my daughter wants to use her gift certificate this year to buy `big and clunky shoes’. Now what man can be expected to know what in the world that means?”
“You know,” said Steve with obvious surprise, “you just may have stumbled on to something here. What did you say the name of that shoe store was?”
“Nine West,” I said, “but if I was you, I’d also check the Macy’s, because sometimes they have a 50% off sale, and do you know what a woman likes even more than a new pair of shoes?”
“No. What?”
“Two new pairs of shoes!