WRAPPING THOSE BEAUTIES

WRAPPING THOSE BEAUTIES

Bob Talbert

Of all the people in this world I envy (and there must be three), people who wrap spiffy packages are God’s gift to Hudson’s and I wish I could be like them.

My packages come out looking like a shirt somebody stomped on. I have a hard enough time with shoelaces (the Free Press hires the handicapped), much less itsy-bitsy ribbons on Christmas packages. I can tie the best knot you ever saw, though.

I can also wrap the crookedest packages. The paper never comes out right. I either have too much or too little, and I don’t know what’s worse, having to scrunch up the ends or patch an extra hunk of wrapping across the gaping hole in the middle.

For some reason, I buy Christmas presents that defy wrapping. They have these strange angles shooting out here and monstrous hollows yanking away there. And they never come in boxes, which forces you to overdress your find in'a Saks box or insult it in something from K-Mart. How things like that ever got shipped to the store I’ll never know.

Usually they are long, thin things with obscene knobs protruding from the ends. If you can wrap something like that and keep the giftee from knowing it’s a Long-Thin-Thing-With-An-

Obscene-Knob-On-The-End, you’re a better man than I.

But you’re probably not a man. Giftwrapping is a science that only women, in their infinite wisdom, seem to have a knack for. Man’s hands aren’t meant for that type of thing. Men’s hands are meant for rolling joints, snapping poptops, taking engines apart, signing checks, but not wrapping gifts.

The closest man comes to that sort of thing is putting a knot in his tie (and you know how often that is), and six out of ten times the ends don’t work out right and the thin part is longer than the wide. Such kinks were worked out, of course, by the man who invented the ready:tied necktie.

You might ask why such an individual doesn’t get to work on a realdywrapped package. All you’d have to do is slip your package in the open end and seal it with a strip of tape. He’d have my money on the line for a gross.

Most of the bigger stores (your Hudson’s, your Jacobson’s) have special counters where they do nothing but gift-wrap. That’s all well and good for folks that can wait. But when clerks spot the packages I’m carrying, they

somehow lose my number. For $2.00 an hour they aren’t going to break their necks over these Long-Thin-Knobbed jobs I buy. I can’t blame them.

I put in some heavy wrapping over a recent weekend and I believe I set a new indoor record for Scotch tape abuse. If my giftees get these gifts before Easter, they’re doing good. I’m giving one fellow a lid that’s coming his way in a 4-pound package, 3 1/2 pounds of which is clear tape. I just seem to get crazy when I get a roll of tape in my mitts.

But it’s the only way I can get the bleeding monsters wrapped. The philosophy is, if you tape it enough, no one can see inside and it won’t come apart. Of course, you need a machete and dynamite on Christmas morning to open them, but it’s the thought that counts.

Once I get everything wrapped, I stand back, admire my handiwork, and try to guess which gift goes to what person.

The only thing worse than that is worrying about whether I removed the price tags or not. You’ll never know either, until the next time you see the giftee. If he smiles, you’re in good shape. If he ignores you, you know you left that $20 tag on his shirt and the gimcrack he gave you cost $50 easy.