December 8, 2004
Christmas List

Not again.  It happens every year around the first of December.  There’s a daughter on the phone, it matters not which daughter because they all ask the same question,  “When oh when are you going to send me your Christmas list.  I have every name but yours and I want to get my Christmas shopping done without a special trip just for you.  Please e-mail your list.”   

“Oh get me whatever you want,” I reply.

 “No that won’t work or you’re going to wind up with a Fitty Cent Greatest Hits CD.  I haven’t the slightest idea of great gifts for geezers.  Send me your list.”  

But fathers don’t give up that quickly phone fencing with a daughter.  “Ask your Mom, she knows what I need, I don’t have a clue.” 

“No, I want a list from you. Mom has enough on her Christmas agenda.”  Beaten at every turn I attempt to come up with an itemization of things Christmassy.

Plasma TV

Golf shirts

A Ford GT-40

Underwear or socks

Any CD by Allison Krause or Emmylou Harris.

Starbucks gift card 

And then the critique begins. “That’s not a Christmas list, you’re just taking the easy way out.  I can’t afford a Plasma TV and you know that and we gave you a golf shirt last year remember?”   

No I don’t remember. To digress for a moment the average over age twenty-five American male hasn’t the slightest idea what he received for Christmas last year.  That’s not the case with females, “Oh look,” they’ll say, “Little Susie is wearing the shirt I got her sister at that Branson gift shop six years ago.”  But males?  Some time back the three blondes thought nothing funnier than giving me a gift I had already received in preceding Yuletide gift exchanges.  I’d open a present, it would be a tie, and I’d be mannerly and look the giver in the eye saying, “Hey thanks that’s very nice.” And then all three daughters would convulse in spasms of laughter since I was thanking them for a gift I’d been given three or four times before.  This went on several years in a row as I was annually given a tie that I had also un-wrapped on many a preceding Christmas morning.  Well ha ha ha.  Why would anyone remember a tie?    

Meanwhile back at the father/daughter phone conversation Dad is taking a beating. 

“And I’m not buying you underwear.  You put that down every year and it’s the dumbest of Christmas gifts.  Buy your own underwear, you can get them in a three-pak at Wally World or Target.”  

It’s quickly apparent nothing is right with my list.  “You already have sixty gazillion Emmylou or Allison Krause CD’s.  I’m sure whatever I bought would be a duplicate.  And don’t ask for a gift certificate at Starbuck’s.  That’s a stocking stuffer not a present.  Anyway what’s a Ford GT-40?” 

“Well”, I reply it’s this really, really cool car you can see right now on the showroom floor at Western Slope Ford.  It’s a killer car that makes me incredibly handsome when I sit behind the wheel.   

“What’s the cost?” comes the inquiry.  “Why just a little over a quarter of a million,” I reply, “But I’m sure you could negotiate the Ford folks down to two hundred thousand or so.”