Off-White Friday

I have a fantasy version of myself who lives in a parallel universe and accomplishes life much more efficiently than me. For instance, Fantasy Chris works out a lot, and has all his Christmas shopping finished before Thanksgiving. "But Fantasy Chris, while buff, is missing out on some fantastic bargains, and surely spending too much," you say. Ah, but Fantasy Chris also has no credit card debt and bought gold back in 1999, so it's all good. Let him do some Fantasy Trickle-Down Economicking.

Not only does Fantasy Chris finish his Christmas shopping early, he picks out thoughtful, individualized surprise gifts that nobody thinks to ask for, but everybody remembers for years to come. And he wraps them personally with a handwritten note on stationery he designed himself, because, in addition to being a gym rat, Fantasy Chris is a bit of a Martha Stewart. And he has excellent handwriting. Fantasy Chris may or may not have also adopted a Romanian orphan—that particular detail is still under investigation.

Real Chris, that's me, is a pretty terrible gift giver. I still aim for the surprise gift nobody asked for because there's something inside my ego that says "I know what you want more than you know what you want," no matter how many times I'm proven wrong. I excuse my gift-buying tardiness to this need for inspiration, this hope that one morning, in the shower, a light bulb will go off and I'll suddenly know that my sister really wants a three-year subscription to Ms. or a gift certificate to an aromatherapy boutique, no matter how many times my mom has said an iPod Nano will do. Because I have lived time zones away from most of my giftees for all of my adult life, the Internet has been my savior and my bane. Savior in that I can just have the site ship things, due to my pathological horror and distrust of all things shipping. Bane in that I wait so long that I often pay double the worth of the gift in last-second rush shipping charges.

The only benefit to being a terrible gift giver with no forethought is that I can blissfully sit out so-called Black Friday in a smog of false smugness. "Silly people," I think, "scuttling about in chase of elusive deals on utterly cliché gifts, huffing and puffing over traffic and parking spaces whilst I recline on my divan by the fire and enjoy a good pipe." I slip into a reverie about the activities of Fantasy Chris on Planet Earth-Prime, who is undoubtedly slurping a kale-and-spinach smoothie and loping away on a treadmill. Meanwhile, all of my loved ones are getting screwed over by my procrastination, even as they probably dash about from store to store on Black Friday looking for the perfect gift for me. And finding it! Even though my response to every gift query is "I don't need anything," a sophisticated way of saying, "Surprise me, and it better be good."

Every year is an opportunity to change, except that every year I'm more and more cash strapped, which adds to the procrastination, as if sometime between now and December 14 I will suddenly find an extra $10,000 and therefore be able to buy much nicer Christmas gifts than I anticipated. Because I'd hate to blow my gift-buying energy on an iPod Nano when I could get an iPad and slip two round trip tickets to the Bahamas in the instruction manual. ("But you could always return the Nano." "Shut up, Fantasy Chris.") In fact, if anyone knows where one might find $10,000, I'd greatly appreciate the tip.

I think I will make one resolution this Christmas shopping season, though, and that's to be as mediocre as possible. No more shooting for the moon. If someone asks for something, I will buy it. They may not remember that I bought it for them, or that they got it for Christmas at all, but I will at least have taken a step toward good gift giving. I'm a bit too old for people to be charmed by my delightfully quirky unwanted gifts (not to mention the atrocious, uncoordinated wrapping job that accompanies them) and a bit too young to be Weird Forgetful Guy Who Always Buys You A Matchbox Car. (Thanks, Uncle Irving!) In these middle years, the least I can strive for is "thanks, it's a very nice sweater" guy.

Crap, this entry is so standard newspaper column "shopping season has begun" that I feel like it should end with one of those hack prods for commentary. "What about you, America? How will you survive the holidays?" Meanwhile, Fantasy Chris is knocking everyone's socks off with a thought-provoking book review of Light in August that ties in the war in Afghanistan and the essential American characteristic of misplaced optimism. I should really start a blog about his life instead of mine.

D.A. Freccia: You're a pretty smart fella. 
Joe Moore: Ah, not that smart. 
D.A. Freccia: If you're not that smart, how'd you figure it out? 
Joe Moore: I tried to imagine a fella smarter than myself. Then I tried to think, "what would he do?" 

—David Mamet, Heist