Mickey's Musings
I have stories to tell.

My previous boyfriend gave me the most incomprehensibly bad gift I have ever seen one Christmas. I could never even imagine such a thing. Sadly, everything I am about to write is true. I kid you not. I couldn't dream this stuff up if I tried.

He was so excited, like a happy little puppy. "Oh, just wait 'til you see what I got you!" he said. Of course, I was excited. "You have to go outside," he said. "Oh wow!" I thought. "What could be so big that I had to go outside to see it?"

We went out to his car and he told me to close my eyes while he opened the trunk. I heard him open the trunk and he said, "Now, open your eyes." He had a huge grin of pride on his face and I looked in the trunk. All I saw was a tire and I figured it was his spare, so I said, "Where is it?" 

"This is it!" He said, as he patted the tire.

"No...," I said.

"Yes, and look at the tread -- nice and meaty." (It was used!)

Now, let me fill in a couple of things. This man was making over $100,000 per year. He took me out to nice restaurants where the bill was always over $100.00, which sometimes made me a bit uncomfortable. I knew he was sincere. He knew I needed a new tire because I was driving on my spare, which was a nice, new full-sized tire. I knew he was excited, but I just could not understand. This just was not the kind of present a woman would expect. Practical -- yes. The kind of thing you give your girlfriend for Christmas -- not so much.

I was raised to be polite and appreciative when people gave me gifts, whether I liked them or not, and I was pretty good at being gracious, but I was so shocked, I asked, "Okay what did you really get me?"

"This is it," he said.

"Really?" I asked.

"Really."

I thought about it. Then I got the idea that this was a test, since it was our first Christmas together, so I said, "Okay, thanks..."

I gave him his gift. Since I knew he liked beautiful things but would never buy them for himself, I had bought him a nice set of crystal wine and champagne glasses. He loved them.

I asked him twice more during that day if the tire was really my gift. "A used tire?" I asked. I didn't want to hurt his feelings, but he eventually realized that I was completely baffled and unimpressed.

He was the most gift-challenged person I ever met. Further exciting gifts on other occasions included an onion keeper for keeping a partially used onion happy and a lemon keeper for keeping a partially-used lemon contented. Even so, we were together for a very long time afterward. He drove home to Iowa sometimes and I always asked him what he was getting for his mother. He always told me that he would stop off at 7-11 or Walgreens and pick up something on the way. He was serious!

I started giving him a list of things I might want before any gift-giving day, and told him to just pick something from the list to buy. They weren't expensive things. They were just things I liked that I wouldn't necessarily make a special effort to go get for myself. When I wanted something expensive, I bought it for myself.

Eventually, he asked me how I always knew what to get for him. I told him that all I had to do was listen to him throughout the year and pay attention, storing his words in my memory warehouse for future reference and using those memories to thoughtfully choose something he would like.

I believe that most times, women are (usually, not always) much better at doing that than men. Sorry, guys. You just don't understand.