Some Are Meant to Wrap
Some are meant to wrap, and wrap greatly. Others, the sad and desperate, are very much not meant to wrap.
I am the latter.
Seriously, I have been wrapping gifts for over 30 years. Sure, I don’t run as fast as I used to, or do as many pushups, but generally speaking where skills are concerned, as I’ve grown older I’ve gotten better — partly due to practice, partly due to the lessons learned along the way.
Why isn’t it the same with with wrapping presents?
I sit here, at 2:46 in the morning, surrounded by what can only be described as festive chaos. Scraps of paper, bits of tape, forbidden kitten-alluring ribbons, and torn and discarded labels surround me. My Christmas gifts are all wrapped, crappily.
I remember a period in my life when I was actually good at this. Gifts that I wrapped were tight. The patterns on the wrapping paper lined up perfectly. Labels had little festive pictures drawn on them. Bows were works of art. And I never used more than 3 pieces of tape per package.
What has happened to me? One of the gifts I wrapped tonight has about 200 pieces of tape on it. It’s not something weird, like a rake or a bicycle — it’s a box. A simple box. Yet for some reason, I found it gangly and unwieldy. It thwarted my every attempt to encase it in brightly coloured paper. My solution was to tape that melonfarmer down until it was more tape than paper. Heck, it might be more tape than present now.
And then there are the mental mistakes. Sure, it’s late, and I had some (pretty fantastic) wine tonight, but there’s no excuse for some of these. After wrapping one of Timmi’s presents, I got out a tag, stuck it on the present, and wrote in a stylish and flowing hand, “To John“. I froze, and panicked. What was I supposed to do now? It was an adhesive label, to take it off would mean having to re-wrap, and as I’ve described already, I don’t do well with that option.
I could have stuck another label on, but that would have looked silly right? Plus I would have had to get another label. No, I was punchy enough to think that adding ” ’s wife, From John” on the end of my mistake was the best solution. I’m sure Timmi and the family will enjoy that one — but there’s no turning back now!
The problem is that I’ve been blessed and cursed to live with people who are MUCH better at wrapping gifts than I am. First, my brother, who could only be described as a child phenom when it came to these matters, and now Timmi, who wraps like she bakes, which is to say she wraps like a professional who should be on TV. Between these two talents, she’s a real double threat in the holiday season.
As nice as it is to have people around who not only CAN do the wrapping for me but do it about 100 times better and actually enjoy themselves, there is a major problem — unless I can get Graham and Timmi wrapping my presents to Timmi and Graham for me, I have to do a bit of wrapping myself, and now I’m out of practice and riddled by feelings of inferiority whenever I do bring out the materials and commence the holiday travesty that is my gift wrapping.
For those of you out there who will be receiving gifts from me this year (with the exception of Timmi) rest assured that when you get your gift and it is wrapped beautifully and artfully that part of my gift to you is having Timmi wrap it. It’s better for everyone this way.