The fine art of gift giving

Rob Price

My wife asked me what I want for Christmas, and, honest man that I am, I answered her truthfully: A robot.

We were standing in a Sharper Image store, where I had been playing with a four-legged robot called a Roboquad. It was a cool red toy that performed a funky little dance when you pressed the correct button on the remote control operator. I also had learned how to make it pivot in circles.

"Well, I'm not going to get you that," my wife said.

I tried being reasonable, pointing out all the ways a four-legged robot would improve our lives. "Just think of the cats," I said.

But my wife has some sort of hostility to robots, at least robots as Christmas presents. In fact, she is hostile to just about all the cool things in the Sharper Image, a store that usually is full of men playing with toys during the holiday shopping season.

The situation made me reflect upon an eternal mystery, and I don't mean the miracle of the babe in the manger. The mystery with which I've been struggling for years is how men and women are fundamentally different, especially when it comes to gift giving.

Most men, advised their wives would like a red robot for Christmas, would rush out and buy at least two. That's because men like simplicity in their relationships. A man doesn't mind the fact his wife wants a red robot for Christmas. Who knows? Maybe she'll let him play with it once in a while.

But women are different. A woman doesn't care what her husband really wants for Christmas. A woman prefers giving her husband a gift that she, the woman, wants her husband to have. This generally does not include red robots.

It gets more complicated when men need to pick out a present for their wives. Most men can figure out what would be a practical gift for their wives; smart men, however, know their wives don't want practical gifts. Give your wife something practical like a flashlight - even a cool flashlight that throws a beam two miles - and she'll throw you two miles.

What then do women want? I have been married nearly 25 years, and I'm beginning to get a glimmer. For starters, women like presents that mak them feel good about themselves. This principle makes every marital gift-giving situation unique, because each individual wife is maddeningly, uniquely quirky. Wives aren't like husbands, most of whom feel good about themselves when they unwrap a gift and find a red robot in the box,

Not only is each wife an individual, she also - obviously - has a quirky relationship with some man that we call "a marriage." This further complicates the gift giving calculus, because a wife doesn't just want a gift that makes her feel good about herself. She wants her husband to understand what makes her feel good about

herself.

That's why women in general don't want their husbands to give them red robots for Christmas. Even when your wife clearly needs a red robot, she doesn't want you to give her one because she doesn't want a gift that signals you, her husband, think a red robot is just the sort of thing that would make her happy.

This explains why my wife enjoyed the silk pajamas I gave her one Christmas. Once, I gave her a black velvet, strapless evening gown; that was a very successful gift too. even though she only wore it once or twice. The point is, she liked the fact it was I, her husband, who had picked out the silk pajamas and black velvet evening gown.

This would also explain why she was a little cool about the wooden nutcracker I gave her one year. Not only was a wooden nutcracker not the sort of thing that made her feel good about herself, it failed to impress her with my own devotion to her well being.

On a side note, this would also explain why an old girlfriend of mine wasn't impressed when I gave her a BB gun for Christmas - even though we enjoyed shooting it together in my backyard for a few weeks before breaking up. She probably wouldn't have like a red robot either.

But just to be clear about this: I would enjoy a red robot. Directing a remote controlled red robot across the livingroom floor, startling the cats and chasing the dog, is the sort of activity that would improve my day, give me peace of mind. In short, it would make for a very merry Christmas.

Hope yours is merry too.