THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511150068
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: He Said, She Said
SOURCE: Kerry Dougherty & Dave Addis
LENGTH: Long : 105 lines
KERRY SAYS:
Dave, I'm writing this to you on behalf of Kay and all your loved ones. It's mid-November. Have you started your Christmas shopping yet?
Of course you haven't. What are you waiting for, big guy?
At the risk of writing yet another whining woman column, I'd like to point out that since women do most of the shopping in the United States (more than 93 percent of all Christmas gifts are purchased by women; trust me on this one) - most of us are well into our holiday preparations.
I try to shop all year round, wrapping as I shop, labeling each gift with a yellow sticky note then piling them in a corner of the attic.
Theoretically, I should have all my Christmas shopping done by the first week in December, allowing me to enjoy the holiday season without any trips to the maddening mall or with staying up late fighting with Scotch tape and ribbons.
In fact, I bought Steve's main gift back in September.
Which gets me to my point.
What I am about to relate is a cautionary tale. I tell it at the risk of picking at a painful marital scab.
It is the story of what I have come to call my ``green leather'' Christmas.
That was the year I awakened Christmas morning to find a neat little pile of gifts under the tree with my name. As I opened each present I was treated to yet another desk accessory - each made of dark green leather.
There was the eyeglass holder, picture frame, blotter and photo album. Perfectly nice gifts, but curiously similar.
Steve confessed later that a local leather goods shop had gone out of business at the holidays and he'd done a little one-stop-shopping.
He seemed proud of himself.
(That's better than the year before when a discount appliance store went bust in December and my gifts included an iron, waffle maker and blades for the Cuisinart).
Each December I become really nervous, watching the paper to see what local businesses are going bankrupt. If it's an auto supply joint this year, I'm sunk - although a distributor cap could be turned into a pencil holder, one of the few desk accessories I don't have.
Now before you get started, Dave, I am not a greedy person. It's not the thought that Steve was delighted by a bargain that bothered me. It was the lack of sweat.
I invest a lot of time into my gift gathering and I try to find thoughtful gifts for everyone - my family and his. You'd think he'd at least remember that Christmas is coming before the Ides of December (that's the 13th of December, for the calendar-impaired).
I've taken a little survey around the office, Dave, and I have yet to find a man who has even noticed that December follows November, let alone given any thought to Christmas.
What's going on with you guys?
DAVE SAYS:
Kerry, get off my back about Christmas or the first gift I buy is going to be for your kids: A nice, cuddly chimpanzee.
They make fine pets. Honest.
Men know the holidays are coming, Kerry. It's not that we can't read a calendar. It's just that Christmas is a very frightening time for guys. And women are to blame.
Women just read too much into the gifts we give them. Like that chic, tasteful set of leather desk accessories Steve gave you. Rather than assume that he meant it as a loving homage to your talents as a professional woman, you assumed the worst: that he'd bought them on a dead trot through a closeout sale at quarter to closing on the 24th of December.
Guys put off shopping because we have this sense of dread that whatever we give you will set the tone of our relationship for a year to come. One slip, one unintended slight, and we're on a steady diet of Hamburger Helper and cold stares for a full calendar year.
You can give a woman an eight-carat diamond for her birthday and it won't offset some simple slight she perceived at Christmas.
And the clerks in the stores are all women, and they're in on the plot. They fawn over anything we drag up to the counter. ``Oh,'' they say, ``she'll just love this.'' What they're thinking is, ``Damn, this fool is in real trouble when his lady unwraps that one.''
I heard a story once that clerks in a certain dress store used to play a trick on guys who tried to shop there. A guy would ask what size he should buy. ``My wife is about your size,'' the guy would say, nodding to the clerk.
And the clerk, who was about a size 6, would answer, ``Oh, well, I wear a 22, but these are cut small, so you'd better buy her a 24 just to be safe.''
When he left, they'd laugh their mascara into a puddle, imagining what kind of Shinola was about to hit this guy's fan on Christmas morning.
I tried to beat the system last year by ordering from a catalog. This year, that single catalog has given birth to such a deluge that my mailman is on permanent disability with a hernia the size of a sweet potato and I'm being sued by Local 27 of the Postal Workers' Union.
I'm bowed, Kerry, but I'm not broken. This year I'm giving Kay a cord of firewood, seasoned and stacked. The moment she starts to squint at me, I'm gonna hit her with a line I've been fine-tuning for months: ``It's because, dear, nothing means more to me than snuggling up and seeing the firelight dance in your lovely eyes.''
Guaranteed to melt her, Kerry. I'm good for another year. MEMO: Kerry Dougherty can be reached at 446-2302, and via e-mail at
kerryd(at)infi.net. Dave Addis can be reached at 446-2588, and
addis(at)infi.net. by CNB