Jerry's got the door to his study closed, and I can hear him mumbling into the phone. I'm pretty sure he's ordering my Christmas presents. I helped him by tearing pages out of catalogs and supplying 800 numbers. (He doesn't do online ordering, too much frustration re forgotten passwords.)
Years ago, pre-internet ordering, I was in a golf shop buying a putter Jerry wanted, and I mentioned to the salesman that I supplied Jerry with a list of things I'd like for Christmas and the names of stores where he could find them. "Oh, boy!" the salesman said. "If my wife did that, she'd get twice as much." These days, I'd order the putter online, but I'd still need direction about which putter.
When I was college, I worked at a department store during Christmas breaks, and I saw many bewildered husbands buying gifts for their wives. Once I waited on Willie Brown and two other lawyers. They commiserated. "I see you've got some bills there," said WB, surveying the clothes one man was buying for his wife. "Yeah," said the man. "It'll add up to enough so she can return them for something she really wants."
Sigh. Is this a way to run Christmas? Probably not. Catalog-page suggestions are a better fit for us, even if it doesn't leave a lot of room for surprise. I tell myself it's a form of communication, and God knows I would have never known Jerry longed for a tome on native plants (Done! Courtesy of the UC Press website).
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