As a service to my readers, I feel it is necessary to share with the men out there my vast knowledge of proper Christmas gift-giving techniques for your spouse. Please note that these suggestions do NOT make me liable for any harm you may encounter as a result of following said suggestions. (The Earth to Dave! lawyers made me say that.)

So without further ado, let us begin.

When setting out to buy a gift for your spouse, it is important to be methodical and first map out your gift giving goals. Consider the person you are buying for. Would this person likely consider the gift to mean that

(a) they are FAT

(b) they need to concentrate on their personal hygiene, or

(c) you have NO CLUE what they like.

If you answered “yes” to any (or all) of the above conditions, my suggestion to you is this: GIFT CARD.

Now don’t just rush out the door and buy ANY gift card. Your loved one might not appreciate a gift card to the auto parts store or local repair shop, when in reality it should be a gift card to a fancy clothing boutique. Consider this:

“Oh, honey! A GIFT CARD…!!….to…..Midas?”

“Yeah, isn’t that great? Your car DOES need a new muffler, and consider how QUIET it will be. See? I was thinking of YOU dear!” (smug look)
(Blank stare from gift recipient).

Or consider this:

“Here’s your gift, sweetie!”

“Oh honey, you shouldn’t have!”

“Well for all you do around here with the house and all, it’s the LEAST I could do! OPEN IT!”

“okay!” (cute giggle as she begins to unwrap the package) “Oh…it’s a…NOSE HAIR TRIMMER?!”

“Yeah, isn’t that great? Now you can trim that moustache thing coming out of your left nostril, and feel better about yourself!”

(WACK!)

So as you can see, it’s VITAL that you carefully consider the gift you intend to give your wife. After all, your life, health and happiness could literally depend on it.

In my almost 20 years of marriage, I have learned that women are more concerned about the THOUGHT that goes behind a gift, rather than the gift itself. Consider this: if you found a flower during your last picnic outing together (okay, humor me here…), and used the dictionary to press it, you could take the flower and have it professionally framed and matted. Under the flower, mount a hand-written poem describing your DEEP ROOTED (plant humor here) love for her. Perhaps it would read something like this:

(What I call “standard poetry”):

Roses are red,

Violets are blue.

Here’s a pressed flower.

It’s all smashed and makes me think of you.

Okay, now I’ve never been very good at poetry, but somehow I believe that my wife would see the love in this, and thus I would score a few “points”.

Points, afterall, are what we men are after.

So if you are like me and have come to the conclusion that you’re lucky to just hover around the minus-5-to-zero range of points, the flower and poem gift is the way to go.

If you ARE like me, however, you’ll never even THINK of the flower and poem idea. Nosiree, you’ll act before you have a chance to think. When this happens, the gears in a man’s head begin to run into overdrive. The focus becomes less on WHAT gift to buy, and becomes on BUYING A GIFT….ANY gift….SOON, so that we can go home and watch “Walker Texas Ranger”, or perhaps “Monster Garage”. Yep, that’s LIVING, baby! Jesse James, tools, hot rods and a hand full of Pringles and a Dr. Pepper. But I digress…

Before you know it, you’ve gotten your wife a “Swiffer mop”, vacuum cleaner, knee-high stockings and a case of diet pills. Somehow, you’ll feel GREAT about having gotten your Christmas shopping done. Not even for a nano-second will you consider the fact that you’re going to REALLY REALLY REALLY regret choosing these gifts.

Face it , guys. We men just don’t “get it”. We figure that our spouse thinks like WE do. After all, we carefully consider the situation, look at all the facts, and then make a decision and act on it. We forget that women work this way:

Consider how they FEEL about the situation, call friends and get their opinions, begin to cry because it’s SO BAD, and then eventually decide it doesn’t matter.

So when shopping for your spouse, consider this: she has FEELINGS. How would she FEEL about this gift.

For instance, if in your haste to finish your shopping, you stumble upon a size 52 Hawaiian mu-mu (moo-moo?), KEEP WALKING! DO NOT EVEN GO THERE. It doesn’t matter if your spouse IS a size 52. Hawaiian mu-mu’s make you look TWICE as big. This purchase will only lead to heartache.

“Step away from the mu-mu!!”

Carefully considering your spouse’s feelings will feel very “foreign” to you. That is because this is the way it has been since the beginning of time.

Many people do not know this, but when Adam and Eve celebrated their first Christmas, Adam bought Eve a new leaf for her wardrobe. Unfortunately, it was a leaf from the LARGEST PALM TREE he could find! Eve was horrifed and threw a rock at Adam, which hit him in the noggin. Eve stormed off and locked Adam out of the cave. It was NOT PRETTY. Adam was left to sit, hold a piece of ancient glacier on his head and ponder. “What went wrong?” He never did figure it out.

Since then, man has continually searched for the secret to effective gift-giving. His spouse, on the other hand, has been left to wonder, call her friends and cry.

Some things never change. Thankfully, they make GIFT CARDS. Just forget about the car when you buy one.