Wrap Sheet

First, I need your solemn promise that you won’t share this post with any of my relatives. Deal?

This is about gift wrapping, one of the things I most hate in life and which is required this time of year, or seems to be.

Like everything else in America, this is something of an Olympic sport now, at least in my family. While we have gift boxes that already have appropriate decorations printed on them, there’s still an unwritten rule that we have to freshly wrap everything. It is noticed when someone has produced a wrap job with absolutely flat corners. While the degree of difficulty is adjusted for large cubical boxes or odd shapes, there are still unspoken points taken off by the judges for excessive use of Scotch tape.

I especially hate the ribbons, because they are always miserably twisted when I try to wrap. I simply quit the team on this one. I will wrap the boxes, but it’s my wife’s job to do the ribbons. She even does the thing where you make them curl by pulling on the ends of the ribbed ribbons with half a scissors.

As if this weren’t enough, there is the UNwrappping. My position has always been that if I’m opening a gift, I cut and tear vigorously to get into it and ask questions later. But there are family members who are so enamored of the wrapping paper that they sloooooooowly remove it, being careful not to wrinkle or fold it, because it’s so beautiful that it must be used again for something next year. We do keep bows. We have a green garbage bag ready for the wrapping materials to be discarded and a white bag to save the bows – and a few scraps of precious paper -- for re-use. They work on birthday gifts, too, fortunately.

But if you run across me in my next life and you want to give me a gift, it’s OK if you just hand it to me as is, I’m 100 percent down with that. It’s just that in this life, we don’t usually have quite as much time to spare. Ya think?