The Art of Gift Giving

I love to get presents. I really do and it makes me wonder why more of you haven't sent me some of the items on my fetish outfit and equipment wish list. Oh well. Anyway, I hope everyone had a great holiday. As I said before, you don't have to be Christian to enjoy the cultural aspect of the day and I know I enjoyed seeing the lights and having fun with friends. It was a good time.

Still, the whole present issue. You know a lot of stores do wedding registry now. It makes sense to me. You go in and say what you want and people buy it for you. Everyone wins. You get stuff you wanted and not useless crap that ends up being used as doorstops or being re-gifted and they get to quickly and easily get you something that they know you're going to love rather than racking their brains for days or weeks trying to figure out the perfect gift for you because their mind reading skills happen to be malfunctioning at the time. I'm surprised actually that stores don't do registry for other events. Seriously, wouldn't it make sense to have a Christmas registry? You go to a store, register your crap and then tell all your friends to go there to buy your stuff. They do the same thing, everyone wins. Of course it probably would be even easier just to buy yourself what you want, they buy what they want and then everyone really wins. Or maybe we should all just hold on to our money and buy stuff we want when we want it and not worry about the whole giving thing.

Of course that would ruin the surprise of the thing. I love good suprises. I hate bad ones. That's why the registry is so important, even for birthdays! You know what really sucks though? Someone gives you a gift that just really sucks. You open things thing, take it out of the box and it looks like a pair of socks that came off an alley cat that was dead in the road for three weeks before some enterprising guy thought to make socks out of them. Now seriously, are you going to tell your friend that he's a fucking idiot for buying this for you? That's just a little bit ungrateful don't you think? So no, you have to suddenly become an academy award winning actress (or actor if you have a penis and no tits) and pretend like its the greatest thing you've ever seen only to spare the feelings of your friend who clearly must be mildly retarded to get you such a stupid present to begin with. Of course most people aren't such good actors. If we were, we'd be sitting around in our living rooms watching each other instead of the television. So its pretty obvious most of the time when someone is getting saddled with something they can't stand. "Oh, it's a pair of dead cat socks, um, thanks Bob, they're, um just what I've um always um wanted". Yeah right. You were already trying to figure out how to either destroy, donate or regift them before they were completely out of the box.

I think that's part of why people love giving these gift cards now. It's the big thing. I don't get it at all. See, they don't want to give cash because that's too impersonal so instead they're giving a piece of plastic that works like cash but isn't nearly as good because it can only be used in one place and has all kinds of limitations to it. Worse still is the thing that the stores who sell the gift cards love. The fact that either you have to spend more money than the gift card is worth in order to get the full value from it in which case the store makes extra money, or you spend less than the full value in which case the store gets free money from the left over. Besides, statistics show that 15-20% of gift cards go completely unused. The people at Best Buy and Home Depot love that you know.

I guess most of the year gifts work out okey because its not an immediate reciprical proposition. Someone gives you a birthday present and you have months to come up with something for them. Of course if you forget or get cheapie on them, they might get annoyed and leave you off their birthday present list next year. See that's the problem with Christmas gifts though. Sure they should be given from the heart and without expectation but lets face it, most of us aren't going to keep giving gifts year after year to people who don't recipricate in some way and worse maybe totally ungrateful. There may be certain exceptions for close family or friends, but otherwise it just doesn't work. So in gift giving even if your heart is pure and you expect nothing in return, it still puts a lot of pressure on the other person. I had a friend who wanted to go out with me last Friday night and said he and his wife had a present for me. Now I sent them a card but I didn't get them an actual present. That may have been fine with them but suddenly it put all this pressure on me to have to go out and find something for them. After all, it wouldn't be right to show up empty handed if they were going to give me something. But then you get more pressure of what if my present is cheap compared to theirs or worse, what if I overspend and theirs is cheap compared to mine, making them feel bad. And even if they are the same value, what if there's a misinterpretation of value or what if they don't like it. This is just for one set of friends mind you, imagine having this issue with a big family and a large circle of friends. It's no wonder people lose their minds and get totally stressed out during the holidays. If I got presents for everyone like that, I'd lose my shit too. Luckily I generally only get a few small things for some close friends and thats it. Seriously, it's a holiday it's not worth losing your mind over.

What I really want though is for fetish stores to come up with a gift registry. I have to believe one of these places like Pleasure Chest or Stockroom already has one and I've just overlooked it. Granted, that's the kind of thing you really only share with your friends who are into bdsm and sexual fun. It's a little wierd to say to Grandma Nanihiki that what you really want for your birthday is a latex catsuit and a dildo with vibrating nodules. Of course my grandma is pretty cool and given that she is a woman and understands and woman's needs, she may end up surprising me. Still, there's somethings I'd rather not involve my family in you know. Nevertheless, if you hear about a registry at one of these cool bondage stores, let me know, maybe that way when next year rolls around, my stocking will be filled with tight shiny latex and exciting bdsm equipment rather than old socks that look like dead cat feet.