My Irrational Love-Hate Relationship with Gift Bags
Someone’s stash under the bed is starting to raise the box spring
You will not be receiving a scented candle from me for the holidays this year. No matter how lovely or handcrafted they might be, I do not purchase scented candles because I do not think their P.I. score is high enough. P.I. is my term for “present impact” or the degree of wow that I believe a gift might possess. Over the years, my experience has been that candles, mugs, calendars, slippers and Isotoner driving gloves all have fairly weak P.I. scores, so I do not buy them. I also walk past t-shirts. I once spent a full $75.00 on a one-of-a kind t-shirt (not hard to do these days), only to watch the recipient produce a weak smile that could only mean “Um, just a t-shirt?”
No, I go for zing (not bling), and on my budget that is hard to do. The secret is the wrapping.
Gift bags are great. I place one of my well chosen presents in a brand new gift bag; maybe something with a dark purple, swirly design. Then I tie the handles together with a fancy silver ribbon. Voila! Certainly dresses up that fluorescent yellow highlighter that I am giving someone. My friends and family all do the same for the gift they are giving to me and somehow I never catch on. As long as the gift that I am unwrapping comes nestled in
a gossamer bag with perhaps a duckling design, I am delighted. So what if it’s a can of brake fluid?
After all the celebrating is done, I cannot bear to throw out the gift bags
that I have received so I wedge them under my bed. The collection is beginning to raise the box spring so I really must start to use them up. The problem is, every time I pull out a bag, I freeze with fear that I might be giving the same bag to the person who gave the bag to me. One time, I was in a hurry to get to a party and grabbed a shiny green sack for the bottle of wine I was bringing. Dashing to the car, I told my patient husband he could go ahead and back out of the driveway. “No, wait”, I yelled and ran back in, thinking surely the other bag would be safer. Out we backed again, this time with a blue speckled bag. Halfway to our friends, I must have made my eyebrow scrunchy with uncertainty and without a hint of discussion,
my husband made his brow scrunchy which meant that going back a second time was not an option. Discarding the bag all together, I re-wrapped the wine in a district road map from the glove compartment.
My girlfriend once asked, “Why don’t you put a yellow Post-it on each bag after you receive it? You could write down who not to give it to.”
Yes, I could do that, but the truth is I can no longer trust myself to remove the Post-it before offering the gift. Inevitably, I’d watch in horror as the recipient would admire my splendid offering, notice the sticky and then read aloud, “For God’s Sake do NOT give this to the Hendersons.”
“What kind of insensitive lout do ya think I am?”
Now I’m off to the mall for an “I’m sorry” gift.
A scented candle might be nice, but I really need something with a higher P.I. score, don’t you think?
