Gift Anxiety

I'm not sure when gift-giving became such a difficult task. I remember when all it took was a few hours and some construction paper and markers for me to make enough presents to please everyone in my family (except perhaps my brother, who really just wanted a Sega Genesis game.)

Nowadays, the process of giving Christmas gifts is more like a giant guessing game which you're almost certainly going to lose. Most people for whom I buy gifts make lists, so it's not as if I don't know what they want. But as I've grown older, I've fallen into that sticky trap of believing that the best gift is the one that's not on the list, the one that the person has yearned for for years but has forgotten about and neglected to put on his or her list. This is the gift that will make him or her beam with glee upon opening it and say "I can't believe you remembered I wanted this! I didn't remember I wanted this!" Then he or she will proceed to immediately put it on and admire him or herself in the mirror, open it up and start reading, or break it out of its box and begin tinkering with it.

But obtaining this perfect gift is of course near impossible. It involves intense mining of your own memory and/or telepathy. It also leads to panic attacks when you realize that it's two days before Christmas and you still haven't bought anything for the person because you were waiting for this stroke of inspiration to hit you and point you toward this elusive "perfect gift" you've decided you have to find. It's ridiculous.

And even should you find yourself in front of some item in a store which you believe might indeed be this perfect gift, if you're not absolutely sure and you decide to chance it and buy it anyway, and the person hates it and thinks "I gave her a list. Why didn't she just get me something off my list?" well, then you're royally screwed.

Maybe I'll just go back to the construction paper. I'll give everyone a handmade bookmark or a coupon book full of things like "one free carwash." Except that nobody washes their own cars in the city and no one really needs another bookmark.

Oh, the agony...