Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 7, 1993 TAG: 9312070077
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Neil Chethik
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This is not a task to be dismissed lightly. Relationships turn on such things. But after substantial research (i.e., a trip to my local 4,267-store mall), I have discovered a surefire strategy for surviving the holiday season. Ask your partner what she wants, and get it for her.
Plus chocolate.
This strategy won't win you big points for creativity or originality, but it will permit you to enter 1994 as part of a couple. It's a classic case of better safe than sorry.
And don't think you won't be sorry if you mess things up. Women will tell you it's the thought that counts. But if so, they've developed an intricate system for evaluating each thought we purchase, wrap and hand to them.
They are looking at two major criteria:
1. Is the gift too little?
2. Is the gift too much?
I found out a number of years ago what happens when you fail criterion No. 1. My Valentine's gift to my girlfriend actually wasn't too little. It simply did not exist. Which, in my mind, was NOT a signal that I wanted out of the relationship. Rather, I had decided that Valentine's Day was vulgar and commercialized, and that I would not succumb to the corporate-inspired ritual of exchanging gifts.
My sweetheart might have accepted that. It's just that I didn't tell her - at least until after she gave me my gift. Suffice it to say that I celebrated Washington's birthday by myself.
My friend Tony was a little luckier. He was heading home late from work one day when he realized that he had forgotten it was Valentine's Day. He found a flower shop open, but all that remained was a bouquet of hideous orange and purple carnations.
He winced when he saw them. And then he bought them.
His fiancee winced too when he showed up at her house that evening. Then she put the flowers on her mantle - where they remained for weeks, wilting, molding and turning to sludge. Each time Tony visited her home, he found a reeking, rotting reminder of what a thoughtless jerk he had been.
As you can see, there are dangers in coming up short in the gift department. So better to aim high, right? Be extravagant, romantic. Expose your soul to her.
Yeah, right. My friend Mark did that, and it cost him.
It was the early 1970s, and Mark was diggin' on a college classmate named Ellen. As the Christmas season approached, he decided to go straight for Ellen's heart.
An amateur musician and songwriter, Mark spent weeks writing and recording a tape of original love songs for her. He also adapted the wording of some of his favorite rock tunes to fit Ellen and their relationship.
Her reaction: "Thanks, and by the way, I've been wanting to talk about our, um, friendship ... " To this day, Mark insists that his only mistake was that raunchy rendition of "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"
So how can men win at the gift-giving game? We must seek that delicate balance between what will disappoint her and what will scare her away. Or, we can simply join the whatever-she-wants-plus-chocolate school of giving gifts. (My wife says it better be GOOD chocolate.)
Sometimes I wish women would receive gifts the way men do. We're not necessarily easy to buy for, but we seem to be satisfied with whatever we get.
\ Men-tion
In one New Guinea society, where people use gifts to shame rivals, a man recently gave another some cows and wild birds, several hundred pigs, a truck, a motorbike, and thousands of dollars in cash. Then he said: "I have won. I have knocked you down by giving so much." That according to "You Just Don't Understand," by Deborah Tannen (Ballantine, $10)
\ Male call
Men: What was the best-received gift you ever gave to a woman? Women: What kind of gift do you like from a man? Responses may be used in a future column. Send mail to the Men's Column, in care of the Features Department, Roanoke Times & World-News, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, Va. 2491. 24010-2491.
by CNB