Confessions of a Failed Gift Wrapper

I am the worst gift wrapper in the world. Most of my gifts are wrapped in pieced-together paper. My excuse is that I am recycling scraps of wrapping, but the truth is I just have a habit of underestimating the amount of paper needed.

My husband is a gift wrapping master. I think it has to do with his engineer brain. That meticulous, patient, visual-spatial brain that allows him to spend hours staring at computer code also transforms him into the Martha Stewart of gift wrapping at Christmas time.

"Look at the fancy design I made with this ribbon," Dan says proudly, holding up a perfectly wrapped present, topped with a cutely looped red bow.

I admire his work and smile at him encouragingly, thankful that he has so eagerly completed this task which means there is one less item on my holiday to-do list.

Dan and I barely made it through our first Christmas together as husband and wife before he started taking on all of the gift-wrapping assignments. Whenever we have to wrap gifts for family or friends, Dan immediately volunteers his talents before I can even offer.

His gifts are the only gifts I am permitted to wrap anymore. A typical Christmas morning finds Dan examining his presents from me - the wrinkled paper, the scraps of jagged wrapping on those troublesome ends that have to be folded up like a paper airplane (I was never very good at making those either), the gobs of tape with bits of hair and rug debris stuck to the bottom.

"That looks pretty good this time . . ." he says, furrowing his brow.

Not only am I the worst gift wrapper, but I am also the most conspicuous gift wrapper.

First of all, Dan knows exactly where all of his gifts are hidden, and it's only because of a strict code of honor that he does not go looking for them (and because he already knows what he is getting year after year since he closely monitors our credit card statements - another byproduct of his engineer brain).

"You'll never find them. They are hidden somewhere you would never go," I boasted this Christmas.

"You mean under the bed in the doll room?"

It didn't help that when I went to hide his presents this year, I slammed the garage door and ran past him in a blur, shouting behind me, "Stay where you are!"

Along the same lines, when I go to wrap his gifts, I hop over to wherever he is in the house and say in a sing-song voice, "Don't follow me . . . I'm doing something secret . . . I'm locking the door . . ."

"The doll room doesn't have a lock . . ."

"Shoot!" I say. "Well then, don't come in any closed doors . . ."

By contrast, Dan disappears (which doesn't alarm me at all because Dan disappears quite often - refer to my blog post entitled, "My Husband, the Ninja"), secretly emerges a few minutes later, and sets his elegantly wrapped gifts under the tree.

Once, I told Dan a story about one Christmas during my early college years when my mother forced me to volunteer at the Salvation Army. I was spending a lot of time sitting around the house, whining about my weight and my appearance, and my mother was tired of my self-absorbed ramblings.

"You are going to spend some time helping others who have real problems," my mother said.

She sent me to the Salvation Army. I was assigned to gift wrapping duty.

“They actually let you wrap gifts?” my husband asked incredulously.

"That’s not the point. My mother taught me a lot about the detriment of self-pity that year."

“Still," muttered Dan, "they let you wrap gifts . . . Did they see the finished product?”