Dear Dish on Birthday Gifts
Dear Dish:
As regular reader of "The Main Dish" I have a question.
My girlfriend's birthday is coming up and I was canvassing for present options with a female co-worker. While discussing the topics of jewellery and full day spa treatments I casually mentioned that she already had a Swiffer. My female co-worker chastised me for even mentioning any cleaning product, or cooking product for a birthday gift.
I was confused. Some Swiffers, if you buy the right one, do an excellent job and a clean house would make any girl happy. Also they can sweep and mop at the same time, thus saving precious minutes every time you use it. Basically I'm giving her the gift of time and that would be the best gift of all. Am I wrong?
Signed,
I think I'm a Hero
Dear Hero Wannabe:
Dish is going to be frank with you. You ARE wrong. In fact, you sound so much like a certain Mike of the pink shirt persuasion that it scares me. Are you a distant cousin by chance? He once bought his wife a vacuum cleaner for her birthday. These are not the sort of situations that end well.
What you propose flies both in the face of chivalry and in the face of feminism. Dish cannot support your gift idea or the logic that led you to even consider such a gift. The only way you could get away with giving a girl the gift of a Swiffer for any sort of special occasion is if you gave the Swiffer with a note specifying that the real gift is that you will be using the Swiffer in question to clean on a daily basis and that she herself will never have to touch the wretched thing.
Now, don’t misinterpret. Dish is not giving you permission to just write up a note and then forget about it. In order for it to be acceptable, this note would have to be written in your own blood and include a vow selling your soul to the devil and agreeing to rot in the very depths of hell, spending eternity swiffering a ginormous ball of dust that cannot effectively be swiffered should you should ever consider breaking your house-cleaning-related promise.
Your Swiffer gift idea says that you are still living in the dark ages before the feminist movement and that you believe that women should be responsible for all of the cleaning. It says that when you think of your precious girlfriend, the most important part of the relationship you can think of is the house work she does for you. While this may be true, it is not something you should ever admit or even imply to a woman because what it really tells her is that you are a selfish bastard who only thinks about himself. I am sorry to be so blunt, but I want you to be aware of how your actions are being interpreted.
The kitchen gadgets and appliances territory is more murky. Dish was once given a Kitchen-Aid mixer for Christmas from a boyfriend and, to this day, it remains one of the best gifts she has ever received from a significant other (I even express my thanks again in this public forum). To me, it is a gift that keeps on giving. However, Dish loves to be in the kitchen despite her feminist perspectives on most things. NOT ALL WOMEN DO.
You have to actually KNOW something about your significant other before even considering going this route. However, I do have to put one more plug in for the Octodog. The Octodog is an easy-to-use gadget than any woman would love. (Another classic is the Holy Toast Stamper.) Generally speaking though, kitchen gifts are best given when you know that the recipient will appreciate them, not when they are coming from the "what delicious food item can my love interest make for me with this kitchen appliance" perspective. This sort of philosophy again places you in the selfish bastard category and will make your love interest start to wonder what she is doing with such a stupid man.
I merely give the advice. If you would like to avoid disaster, I suggest you heed it. On the other hand, if you are secretly dissatisfied with your relationship (as your Swiffer question could imply) and are looking for an "easy out", by all means, buy your girlfriend the Swiffer. Chances are, the relationship will immediately start to crumble and you will be a free man before you know it with a minimum of effort.
Please let me know how it all turns out.
Dish
posted by Dish @ 8:27 PM
4 Comments:
In Mike's defense (and you should really take his full name out of there), he never did buy the vacuum cleaner because female co-workers convinced him otherwise.
Hasn't working solely with women for the past several years taught you anything? ;)
Get in touch with your X chromosomes!
My vote is for the kitchen-aid mixture. Those suckers are expensive, but they come in many pretty colours.
While we're on the topic of B-Day gifts, my boyfriend's b-day is coming up a couple weeks before christmas. I want to give a gift with a message.
My BF is always late when he's picking me up to go somewhere and it drives me batty. He's not real late, around 20-30 minutes usually but just enough that it irritates me. It's always a different excuse but I think he spends too much time in the shower.
With Christmas coming up and we have a bunch of parties we have to go to so I'm thinking about buying him an alarm clock as his birthday gift. Not just a cheap alarm clock but a good one, with a dual alarm. The reason being, he can set one alarm for the time when he has to start getting ready and the second one for when he has to be out the door and to come get me. When he opens the gift, I'll obviously have to explain what it's for and when it's to be used.
Dish, is this a good idea, or should I just get him the Super Sports Package on CableTV so he can watch every hockey game and every football game played this season? (I'll just go to the Christmas parties by myself).
"Not real late"?! Are you kidding?! 10 minutes would be "not real late"! 20 to 30 minutes? Grounds for break-up!
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