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Thinking I do with words - A guide to gifts to buy for me

In previous years, I’ve written columns with gift suggestions for me for Christmas. It has always been in jest, and that’s not something I’m just saying because nobody has ever bought my very silly gift suggestions, not even once.
Devin

In previous years, I’ve written columns with gift suggestions for me for Christmas. It has always been in jest, and that’s not something I’m just saying because nobody has ever bought my very silly gift suggestions, not even once.

They’re grounded in a real idea, however. The perfect gift is something someone wants but, for whatever reason, would never actually buy for themselves. It’s a great guideline for anybody who needs a gift. Sometimes it’s a problem when everyone follows that same guidelines, like the year my parents received multiple sets of slippers, but in general it’s a good guideline for any gift giving situation.

The first gift is not even for me, but for my household in general. It would be great to have a rice cooker, something that we have almost bought multiple times, to the point of having the box in hand, before going ‘do we really need a rice cooker?’ Then visions of the juicer that has sat alone in the bottom of the cupboard would fill our heads and we would decide that perhaps we don’t need a rice cooker. The great thing about a gift is it wouldn’t matter, for now we would have a rice cooker, and we would soon see if we truly need it.

Don’t buy us a juicer though! It doesn’t need a friend.

I would very much enjoy a new winter jacket, though purchase of one is complicated by the twin realities that I have many jackets, and they’re all basically fine - though one has a surprising amount of wear on the right front lapel, which inspires this thought. Knowing me any jacket is going to be suspiciously similar to the old one, probably in black or grey – or possibly brown if I’m feeling saucy – just in slightly better shape with a bit less wear on the buttons. If anything I don’t need a new jacket for at least a year or two. But a gift means I can’t turn it down! Plus I might potentially relive the period of high school when my jacket was bright yellow, wouldn’t that be fun?

Another fun gift would be a small bookshelf stereo, which could live upstairs and play all my favorite songs. This is, again, not a sensible purchase, because I have plenty of ways to listen to music, and in theory could just take the small stereo that lives in the kitchen and carry it upstairs. But that would be work! And that one doesn’t play CDs, and for some reason I still own CDs even though I don’t actually have a dedicated CD player in my home. While I could reduce clutter and get rid of the CDs, it’d be much more fun to play them upstairs.

Shelves themselves would be another great gift. I have a big collection of cameras to display, as is probably well known by now. Because of a lack of display space, they instead live in fun places like ‘the corner of the bedroom’ and ‘under some clothes on a chair’ and ‘near, but not in, a closet, because the closet doesn’t have a light in it.’ None of these are ideal locations, and the cameras are pretty! I really do need to find a place to show them off.  And that would be the perfect gift!

And that’s the list of perfect gifts for 2019, all things I’ve almost bought before realizing I could spend money on sensible things like ‘food’ and ‘bills’ and ‘several shiny cameras that I also don’t need.’ But gifts don’t need to be rational, and are a great way to give me, and probably other people, the things they don’t quite want to buy.