The Funny Thing Is... Read Online Free PDF Page B

to invest a lot of your time. And since time is the one thing none of us has anymore, we end up giving a box-set of Bailey’s Irish Cream liqueur with shot glasses with “Luck o’ the Irish” stamped on the front of them. It looks like a gift, it seems like a gift, but no one ever uses, drinks, or looks at it after December 26 … or December 8 or the week of the 12th.
[Please write to my publisher if the date you throw away useless gifts was not mentioned above.]
    It wasn’t like that back in the good old days, when dear old dad would spend all summer and most of the fall whittling you your own train set out of freshly cut pine. That’s back when thoughts really did count and you could go to the movies all day for a nickel and not get kidnapped. But as times will do, times have changed. If you gave a kid a homemade pine train set today, he would sue you for breach of contract. (Why people sign Christmas contracts with their children these days, I will never know.)
    Since we can’t, as adults, get away with throwing bad presents against a wall and bursting into tears, Christmas is the time of year when we all become really good at lying. Lying is just another form of acting, so in a way, we are all actors in a forty-eight-hour play that runs from the 24th through the 25th of December. Again, unless you’re Jewish, in which case you have to fake it for eight days straight. There are people in Los Angeles who pay thousands of dollars for that kind of rigorous training. Last year, my mother should have at least received a Best Actress nomination for her performance after opening the shoe tree my aunt gave her. It was gritty, real, and heart-wrenching; in short, a tour de force.
    Because of this widely accepted deceit, it’s very hard to tell if someone really likes the gift you got for them (the eggnog doesn’t help either), so here’s a quick checklist that you can use. You know, for checking.
    How to tell if someone doesn’t like the gift you have given them
    1. They say, “I love it.”
    If they say they love it, you can be sure they hate it. Loving a towel rack makes no sense, so clearly they’re overcompensating for the feelings of guilt and shame about the deeper feelings of anger and resentment they have about being given a towel rack for Christmas. Or maybe they’ve gone insane with rage over getting such an impersonal, utilitarian gift after thirty-five years of marriage. (Just a tip: Never give any kind of rack as a gift. I don’t care how nice the rack is. Yes, even rack of lamb.)
    2. They say, “Thank you.”
    “Thank you” is such a loaded statement. The nuances are imperceptible, woven with sarcasm, irony, and plain old sass. The person might as well just spit on your shoe. Special circumstance: If they sigh, shake their head, and stare deeply into your eyes right before they say it, they are an impostor and you should call the police.
    3. They say, “Where did you get it?”
    The nerve! Why don’t they just say, “Does the store give cash refunds so that I can return this and finally get something I actually want?” Quick fix: Buy all your gifts in Japan. That way, nobody wins.
    Epilogue: The Myth of Handmade Gifts
    Unreturnable, unusable, unsightly, unfun. These are just some of the words you can use to describe handmade gifts. Unless you’re related to a talented furniture maker, a clothing designer, or you are someone’s grandma, getting a handmade gift for Christmas is
never
not disappointing. Even grandmas secretly hate them, but society forces them to repress their real feelings about being gypped. Instead, they have to pretend they love multicolored, glitter-covered macaroni sculptures. Why do we put the aged through this kind of strain? They just want a DVD player like everyone else.
    When considering giving a homemade gift, just think to yourself,
Is this a gift I would like to get
? And then think to yourself,
Why do I still have this leather-burning tool when putting your name on