COLUMN: Christmas shopping that will leave everyone happy
This point of the semester usually elicits certain telling stages of student preparation. In order to help you decide which stage of preparation you are currently in, I’ve decided to list them here:
Stage 1: You are frantically reviewing all your notes from the semester to prepare for finals.
Stage 2: You are frantically bugging the student next to you to lend you the notes you neglected to take in preparation for finals.
Stage 3: You are frantically looking up your course schedule to see what classes you were supposed to have been attending all semester long.
Stage 4: You are frantically looking at major sheets to see which one you still qualify for, since you’ve inevitably flunked out of yet another one.
Stage 5: You are frantically wondering what you’re going to do for Christmas presents this year.
This last stage is the most pathetic since those in it have bypassed all the finals-related stages due to the fact that they’ve not yet realized that the end of the semester approaches.
I could obviously offer a solution for each and every one of these stages, but there would have to be a whole Statesman dedicated to just that purpose, so I’m going to focus my energies on the stage that seems most popular: the Christmas present shopping stage.
Christmas present shopping can be a very delicate job. Some of you may think that since you’re giving someone something, you can’t really go wrong with what type of present you get … as long as it’s a present, right? Let me present a scenario that would suggest otherwise.
Just before you leave your apartment to go spend Christmas with the family, you give your roommate a carefully prepared Christmas present. As soon as the present is opened, you smile expectantly. Your roommate sits for a second in silence, jaw dropped slightly.
“So …?” you prompt.
“It’s a coupon,” is the response.
“Yeah …” you say with building excitement, “go ahead and read it out loud.”
You brush off the fact that your roommate isn’t acting as enthusiastic as you had imagined in your mind.
“It says,” your roommate reads off the piece of paper with growing resentment, “Coupon: Good for One Day Free of Washing Dishes.”
Your eyes widen in anticipation of your own creation.
“Isn’t that great?!”
Your roommate’s nostrils flare.
“But I don’t wash the dishes anyway.”
Your demeanor is hardly fazed.
“Exactly, now this will give you more incentive to wash the dishes so that you can take a day off from it.”
Your brilliance amazes you, even though it doesn’t have the same effect on your roommate.
“So your present to me is to make me work harder than I already do.”
You hesitate.
“I wouldn’t put it that way…”
Seconds later you’re lying on the ground with a black eye.
So, in order to avoid such a situation from occurring, I have figured out the ultimate method for not only avoiding offending the recipient of the present but making it extremely affordable for you.
The trick is to not only buy a present, but buy an expensive present. At this point you’re saying, “What happened to ‘affordable’?” Well, the key to making this affordable is to keep the receipt and to get a present that you know the present recipient won’t like. They can’t be offended because they know you spent a lot of money on them. It’s affordable because, after waiting for a couple weeks, you can sneak the present away from the spot where the recipient buries all other worthless holiday presents and return it to the store for a full refund.
Well, that’s all the advice I have time for today. As I conveniently remain ignorant to upcoming finals, I need to buy my refundable pet rhinoceros for some worthy benefactor.
Marty Reeder is a senior majoring in history education. Comments or now useless homemade gifts can be sent to martr@cc.usu.edu