I’m easy to shop for. Here’s why you don’t believe me.
Some years ago I was told, “You’re hard to shop for.” Which is baloney. I am easy to shop for. Just get me coffee.
Anyone who knows me, knows I love coffee. (They don’t always know I love tea, and that I actually drink as much tea as coffee. They always assume my big giant travel mugs contain coffee, ’cause there’s no tea-bag string dangling from the side. You’re supposed to remove the bag, people.) They know I like to hang out at Starbucks™, not for the ambiance but so that I can overdo it on the free refills. They know I don’t just drink it black; though I tend to drink it black, I also drink it with cream, with flavoring, as espresso, as a latté, iced, whatever. They know I drink dark roasts and light roasts, medium roasts and espresso roasts. They know I drink decaf after noon. They know I don’t have a favorite; that coffee is the favorite.
Knowing all this, somehow they can’t figure out that I would really like coffee for Christmas.
Some of this is because they want their gift to stand out. If everyone else is getting me coffee this Christmas, they want to be the one who gets me gloves, or kitchen knives, or yards of plastic sheeting… okay, I gotta stop watching so much Dexter, but you get the idea. They want to be the one person who doesn’t get me coffee, because everyone else is getting me coffee, and they assume—and this is some of their own psychology slipping into their thinking—that I’m gonna be sick of coffee after all the gifts are unwrapped, and that I would really appreciate, underneath the mound of coffee gifts, a Blu-Ray of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Well, guess what: I’m not getting a Blu-Ray player. After all the effort it took me to switch from videocassettes to
As I said, this idea is based on the giver’s psychology, not mine: They would get tired of the monotony of all the coffee-related gifts. I do not. I appreciate each and every one. Every time I get a gift that is not coffee-related, to me it means one of two things: Either you, like my mother, already got me a coffee-related gift, and saw something else that you knew fit my personality, and got it for that reason. Or you (also like my mother) were out shopping anyway, saw something that caught your fancy, and figured, “Well, maybe Kent would appreciate this,” and bought it. That second sort is the sort that tells me, “You’re hard to shop for.” I am only hard to shop for when you’re looking for something other than what everybody already knows I like.
Three years ago I had the brilliant idea of only asking for Starbucks™ cards, with the idea that after Christmas I could consolidate all of them into one giant super mega-Starbucks™ card and drink coffee all year. I said at the time it probably won’t happen, and it didn’t. (My name-it-and-claim-it friends blame this on my saying “It probably won’t happen”; had I simply claimed it would happen, the magic genie in the sky God would have rearranged the free will of all the people I knew so that it would indeed happen. Folks, if name-it-and-claim-it worked, every football team in America would win every game, every time. They don’t, and not just because they mathematically can’t. Well, enough side-ranting.) The reason for my super mega-Starbucks™ card not happening is because the givers simply would not get on board. A few did. The rest insisted on the usual shirts or CDs or books and such. This is because, in their minds, they would not want a super mega-Starbucks™ card. They’d feel deprived if the only thing they had left after a Christmas was an overloaded gift card. They think there’s something wrong with me for pursuing this goal—or thought I was just being facetiously silly and didn’t really want the super mega-Starbucks™ card; I was just saying so for laughs.
And if you want to go to the extreme, there are certain people who like to think of others one-dimensionally. By that, I mean that each of their friends and acquaintances are defined by only one trait. Maybe two or three, but mostly one. To them, I am the friend who drinks coffee. Sometimes I’m the brainy friend who drinks coffee; sometimes I’m the brainy ranting friend who drinks coffee; sometimes I’m even the brainy ranting friend with the ponytail who drinks coffee. Whatever reduces me down to a few memorable traits. If you have two thousand acquaintances, you kinda have to do this in order to keep everyone sorted in your mind. But some folks have only a hundred, and do this with everyone. My dad does it with his kids. (Of course, Dad’s traits are a little out-of-date; sometimes he forgets that I’m not a conservative anymore.)
Okay, so I’m the friend who drinks coffee. Now, not everyone drinks coffee. Or likes coffee. And if you like or don’t like something, sometimes it’s not enough for you to state your preferences. Sometimes you feel the need to defend those preferences, for fear that someone’s going to someday tell you, “You like that? What kind of freak likes that?” Whereupon you have to explain what kind of freak you are. But here’s the thing: Most of the time, you really don’t have to explain it. To anyone. You’re different from them. That’s okay. Do I actually need a reason to like the color green? No; nobody asks about that one, and if they did, they’d be seen as a little over-analytical, even nuts. But apparently some of us need a reason to like certain clothes, certain songs, certain foods, certain computer operating systems. It’s not enough to say, “This is a simple pleasure that makes me comfortable and happy.” It has to be defended to someone who doesn’t feel the same way, and who probably won’t ever feel the same way.
I say this because in the process of justifying one’s own behavior, we come up with certain logical (or illogical) reasons why we do as we do (or not). So why don’t certain people like coffee? “I just don’t,” or “I don’t care for its taste,” to them, is not enough of an answer. They feel they need a reason. And they find one. Every year or so, some researcher takes that personal rationalization, and spends research dollars on it: Some study finds that caffeine is bad for you. Or that it’s good for you. Or that in moderation it’s good for you. Or that some other trait of coffee, like the fact that dark-roast beans are burnt, or that coffee left on the hot plate too long is burnt, is carcinogenic. Or some other such thing. Whatever fits their preference—if they love coffee, they’ll carry around all the coffee-is-good-for-you justification in their brain, and spout them off to anyone who doesn’t like coffee, and therefore is carrying around all the coffee-is-bad-for-you justification in their brain.
Now, if you’ve memorized the anti-coffee party line, you’re likely not getting me coffee for Christmas. You don’t want to encourage that sort of behavior. But to you, I’m the brainy ranting friend with the ponytail who drinks coffee… and that’s all. What else might you get me for Christmas? “Um… er… uh… dangit, you’re hard to shop for.”
This is why, some Christmases, I wind up with completely inappropriate gifts from well-meaning people. Like a copy of Wild at Heart, a book that’s really only good for kindling a barbecue. The thought that went into that gift was either, “Well, he’s a Christian, and a man… hey, here’s a book for Christian men!” or “Hey, Wild at Heart is on sale. Honey, did you read that book?… What’d you think of it?…” Or even, “Aw crap, not another copy of Wild at Heart. Well, maybe I can regift it to some guy at my church.” Or maybe it was a passive-aggressive white elephant gift; I dunno.
In any event: I’m not kidding. I love coffee. You are very unlikely to go wrong if you get me something coffee-related. And I’m still game for another attempt at the super mega-Starbucks™ card.