Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

Kris Kringle quagmire

The difficulties of giving gifts to the opposite sex and how to get around them

By Patrick Griffith

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

I scanned every aisle within a 20-foot radius to make sure nobody would see me. The last thing I needed was for people to know about this. I stared at it for 15 minutes before I finally picked it up to check out. The instant I picked it up I felt the tingling sensation of disgrace and embarrassment all over my body. As I approached the Target checkout with the contraband hidden in a way that might lead some to think I was stealing it, I prepared for the shame. I told the checkout lady it wasn’t for me. She laughed. To this day I don’t know if she believed me. With a stealthy dash, I was out of there, just short of making a scene.

I had to buy a gift for my mother, and because she had been disappointed with every previous gift, she made a specific request: Awake by Josh Groban. But this embarrassment doesn’t have to happen to all men. You can buy a gift for that woman in your life, or that booty-call that you have on speed dial #2 after Rudy’s Pizzeria. And you can do it without ever coming in contact with Josh Groban, Kenny G, or ever setting foot in Bed, Bath and Beyond. It’s not hard, either. Nor is it hard for women to buy that meaningful gift for a guy who is difficult to shop for. There are a few simple tips that go both ways.

Gift-giving isn’t a product of modern times. It dates back to ancient Rome, where gifts were given around the New Year with the hopes of bringing a more enjoyable year with it. Gift-giving saw a resurgence in Victorian England where gifts were a means of expressing simple appreciation. The tradition made its way west to America with one new twist: the introduction of Santa Claus. We’ve come a long way from giving gifts for a more spectacular harvest to epic duels in Wal-Mart over the last Furby or Malibu Barbie.

Robyn Freedman Spizman, author of The Giftionary: An A-Z Reference Guide for Solving Your Gift-Giving Dilemmas…Forever!, says that when it comes to buying gifts, men feel as though they’re gift-impaired, but both sexes can sometimes be hard to please.

Gift-giving becomes more difficult as you get older, Spizman says. When you’re young, you have a list, and it makes shopping easy, but as you get older, people don’t ask for specific things. It’s up to you to put in the effort to find a good gift, she says.

Giving gifts also helps you get to know people, and it reflects how much attention you’re paying, Spizman says. A good gift-giver is really paying attention.

“Anyone is hard to buy for if you don’t know anything about them,” she says.

Many students have difficulties giving gifts, but they also have simple ways of getting around it.

Rona Frey, Dodge City sophomore, thinks women are easier to buy for because there are stereotypical things to get women (i.e. flowers and jewelry), but there aren’t stereotypical gifts to give men. A lot of times she plans well in advance, listens and puts ideas in the back of her mind to avoid future troublesome gift-giving situations.

She also has simple advice to the man with the gift to give but no gift in mind: just think about what the girl likes. She doesn’t think guys ask women what they want enough. Men aren’t confident about what they’re going to choose; they have an idea but they just need a second opinion, Frey says.

Ashley DeSandre, Pocono Lake, Penn. freshman, also believes it’s more difficult for women to shop for men because there is no textbook gift on men for women to fall back on. When shopping for a guy, she’ll ask the people who know what he wants more than he does: his mother and/or sisters. She says she can get a better idea of what he actually needs from them.

DeSandre also has a few simple tips for the gift-impaired men reading this: be thoughtful and don’t be too typical. Think about what she’s interested in, and try your best to match that.

Mike Pinnell, Wichita senior, says buying gifts for women is difficult because sometimes those gifts will become overanalyzed. He tries to guess how they’re going to think about the gift, and says you need to get a gift that can’t be construed in any strange way. It’s harder to buy for his mom because he doesn’t know what the hell she wants, he says.

Pinnell also says that men are easier to buy for. He remembers a great gift a girl recently gave him Valentine’s Day last year. He got two six-packs of good beer, chocolate chip cookies and funny, heart-covered underwear. “It was perfect. How do you beat all that?” Pinnell asks.

He also employs a simple process to shopping for women. Step one: Ask people that are friends with the girl in question. Step two: If step one fails to yield satisfactory results, then troll around Massachusetts Street to see if something catches your eye and hope you’ll get lucky.

You have to think about it first, and put yourself in her shoes, Pinnell says, “because you don’t want to get anything that will get you into trouble.”

Brooke Stebbins, Silver Lake freshman, says she doesn’t have the same trouble shopping for men that some men have shopping for women. “I don’t think guys are that picky,” she says. If you had a high-maintenance guy it could be hard, but her brother can’t even match his own clothes, so that makes it easy.

Stebbins also has a method for shopping that is simpler than Pinnell’s. She usually just asks them what they want, and if they don’t say anything, she just guesses.

So if you just pay attention, do a little pre-emptive planning, and have the intention to show that you care, gift-giving isn’t too tricky. But if not, you’ll probably be at Target on Dec. 24 with all the other helpless gift-givers trying desperately to find Celine Dion Live in Las Vegas.

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