Ingrid and I participated recently in a “giving tree”. For those of you not familiar, a “giving tree” involves plucking a card off of a designated Christmas tree. The card contains the name of a needy person in the community and lists items that they might want or need for Christmas. In our case the individual needed some pants and shirts.
Now this is a really good idea and a great way to actually put some meaning back into a holiday that has become little more than a commercialized scramble to knock items off of the Christmas lists of everyone in your family. It was also a great way to teach Somnia the valor of giving to people less fortunate than ourselves.
Several days before dropping the gift off, Ingrid asked me where the gift was so that she could wrap it. I assured her that the gift did not need wrapped since the card clearly stated, “No time to wrap your gift? We will wrap it for you.” For 2 days I assured Ingrid that the giving tree organizers would wrap the gift and for 2 days Ingrid repeatedly asked to wrap the gift.
The day we were to drop the gift off, I had clearly prevailed. We would utilize the offered gift wrapping services. Much to my dismay and Ingrid’s far greater dismay, the event organizers greeted us with a look of surprise as we handed them our Elder Beermans bag full of booty that we proudly presented for such a good cause. “We are not wrapping gifts” said the organizers. The look on Ingrid’s face could have frozen boiling water as she directed her gaze on me. “But don’t dismay”, they said. “There is paper over there. You can wrap it here” Ingrid’s irritated stare loosened as she surveyed the wrapping materials. “No boxes?” she replied. “Sorry, no boxes”, the organizers answered back.
After a tense few seconds of the organizers waiting for Ingrid’s reaction, she broke the silence, turning to me and stated stridently, “I should have never listened to you.” Like a trooper though, Ingrid proceeded wrapping the gift, without a box, protesting the entire way with proclamations ranging from “This is half-ass” and “This just shows that we don’t care” She then set it atop a pile of “correctly” wrapped gifts in boxes and bows and we exited the scene with Ingrid uttering a final, “how embarrassing.”
Now, I was not embarrassed and after several days of digesting the event I am left with perhaps an even greater sour taste in my mouth for gift wrapping than before the giving tree, gift wrapping train wreck. You see, I have never understood gift wrapping and quite frankly see it as perhaps one of the most outlandish wastes of resources that we as a culture hold dear. Making something pretty to simply rip it to shreds and heave it into a glad bag with the rest of the squandered colored paper just isn’t something I can get behind. I believe that I would be a terrible Mexican child as I would lobby to not thrash the piñata that someone spent so much time and effort creating.
What I believe really caps the whole giftwrapping issue for me is that once again, the sentiments that make Christmas such a wonderful event are lost; buried beneath layers of shiny, dyed paper that have somehow themselves become more important than the sentiments expressed by the gift itself. Perhaps I am such a killjoy that I am completely incapable of seeing the importance of gift-wrap in the Christmas tradition. Perhaps I’m simply trying to cover my ass for not wrapping the gift in the first place.
Posted by chris keesey at December 13, 2005 09:05 AM
Chris,
I have a few choice words for you but it can wait until we get home. You need to stop complaining about wrapping gifts. Admit that you suck at it.
It is my experience, having raised two girls up to teenage, that kids have at least as much fun tearing off the (admittedly wasteful) paper as they do playing with the gifts hidden within. Wrapping gifts also makes it possible to place them under the tree prior to Christmas morning--or Christmas Eve, depending on how your family times that--without spoiling the surprise.
While I share Chris' concerns about the wastefulness of gift-wrapping, there are many more effective, and less emotionally expensive, ways to conserve resources. I, forinstance, pack my lunch every day--I brown bag it. And I use those brown bags over and over, until they fall apart. Likewise, I re-use any resealable bags that I can. I use the same piece of foil to wrap up my daily sandwich until such time as it will no longer hold a crease, or until it is full of holes, whichever comes first. I think that by Christmastime I have earned a few sheets of paper with which to wrap my gifts to loved ones.
People tease me about my lunchtime frugalities. I just shrug, smile and say "F**k you."
To wrap or not to rap
whatever we wrap 99% of the time it is crap
Maybe the rookie wrap job went unnoticed
Maybe the receiver was really pissed
Ingrid was most assuredly angry but it was misplaced
To fire it at Chris was short sighted with a little haste
If I recall correctly the card clearly stated,
We're getting closer to who should be hated
“No time to wrap your gift?
We're warmer to who caused the rift
We will wrap it for you.”
We're not wrapping and now Chris and Ingrid are blue
Why say you're going to wrap if you're not goin to wrap?
Was this some sort of wrapping trap?
Giving tree wrap trap got Chris in hot water
But twas good for his blogger
I assured her that the gift did not need wrapped since
If to only inspire poetry, that entry was worth it. Oh and Rob, please tell me you wash those sealable containers and foil between uses.
Posted by: Chris at December 13, 2005 11:04 AMChris--
I don't wash them, and it has never done me any harm. I would be happy to compare stool samples with any person who thinks--based on the scare tactics of commercial messages about the trillions of microbes crawling all over every square millimeter of their kitchen--that I am consuming vast armies of malicious microbes with my potato chips and turkey sandwich.
Those chemicals that the gullible public smears all over their house while tight in the clutches of Madison Avenue inspired microbophobia, are more toxic by far than the little buggies inhabiting our digestive tracts.
Save the stool sample for your proctologist. I only need to see the sludge that builds up around the rim of an often used plastic cup to know that while you are right, the microbes contained in the sludge are not going to kill me, when you put a fish, chicken or turkey sandwhich in a bag over and over again the bag becomes, for lack of a better word, gross.
Posted by: Chris at December 13, 2005 11:30 AMChris--
The sandwich is in the foil; the foil is in the bag. The sandwich is carefully wrapped; it doesn't leak, smear, or ooze anything onto the bag. The bag never touches the food directly. The baggie that contains my chips gets chippier daily, which only enhances the overall chip experience. The baggie that holds the grapes holds only firm, pristine and intact grapes, not ruptured or leaky ones; it stays good for months. What harm can an apple do? But they don't make brown sandwich bags like they used to make 'em. They wear out, just from being rolled closed, after only a couple of weeks of use. It's disconcerting, but you work with the materials available to you, right?
Nobody ever takes the stool sample challenge, btw. I don't know why.
This is getting disgusting.
Posted by: Ingrid at December 13, 2005 12:11 PMOh, Ingrid, you're so STRICT!
Posted by: Rob at December 13, 2005 01:01 PMThis line has taken years off my life. Rob and his gourmet chips, his oozing bag, and foil that doesn't foil. It's enough to make a man trim the crust off his PB&J. I will tell you that Carlin (George Carlin to those that aren't personal friends like myself) has a great rant about how your immune system needs practice. He said that as a kid he swam in the hudson river and it was filled with raw sewage. "We swam in raw sewage, you know, to cool off!" And actually, there is research out there now that idicates he may be right. So the upshot of course is that Rob, as usual, is crazy and cannot be trusted.
Posted by: Chip, from my 3 sons at December 15, 2005 09:45 AMFirst, Chip was cuter than you--but I digress. Can you not see, you dolt, that Carlin's swimming in the Hudson River, and my frugal re-use of foil and other lunch packaging materials, are equivalent exercises where mircrobial innoculation is concerned?
Why do you think, "Chip", that I can so confidently offer to take the Stool Sample Test (SST)? Do I wash those materials after use? Of course not! They don't boil the Hudson River do they?
Has nothing to do with you being crazy and not to be trusted. Your reiteration of this SST business only proves my point.
Posted by: Way Cuter than Chip at December 19, 2005 11:17 AMLook, "Way"--
Meet me on the corner of Court and Union with a bag of fresh stool and we'll have this out like men. You should feel honored at this offer, because I don't usually even bother with lurking sock puppets such as yourself.