You know to be honest I could never quite figure out the whole idea behind gift-wrapping. I mean let’s face it folks it is kind of a rip off, if you pardon the pun which by the way was most deliberately intended (aren’t they always in this blog)
I kinda got to thinking about this whole gift-wrapping thing this week as I struggled with the first of the presents.
Now I must admit that if I was any good at wrapping presents then maybe these kind of thoughts would never even cross my mind, but since I’m woeful at it (and that’s about the best I can say) then I reckon it’s fair game to question this practice
I mean, come on folks isn’t there something just plain wasteful about buying a sheet of paper (or several sheets if you have somebody like me wrapping) costing, well I dunno what they cost, but let’s suffice to say that it’s a lot.
And that’s especially when you consider that it’s just a piece of paper…and then after spending so much time seeing it just ripped off and thrown in the bin.
It doesn’t matter how pretty the paper is, it just gets discarded and tossed away in the haste to see the goodies inside.
Which, by the way is one of the arguments I have used as to why there shouldn’t be a lot of thought put into the whole wrapping process.
After all why go to such lengths to wrap up something all neat and tidy when the paper is going to be ripped off in half a nanosecond anyway.
Apparently it’s all to do with appearances and stuff – presents apparently look more appealing when they are well wrapped.
I’m not sure I agree with that either though, although I have long since given up that argument in my house.
My thinking on this is well… presents might look more appealing if they are all wrapped up fancy-dancy with bows n stuff, but what use is that?
I mean its what’s under the wrapper that counts, isn’t it?
I know I’d far rather get something I really like wrapped up in say an old newspaper, than a fancy-dancy wrapped up box with something inside it that I hate.
However none of that helped me today as I tried to get on with the job in hand.
In the end I even had to enlist some assistants and so with one of my girls to hold her finger on the paper (I don’t know why she had to do that, but she said she did when she helped her mammy wrap presents) and another girl to hold the cut pieces of sellotape (that soon became one big ball of sellotape) we proceeded with just a few minor difficulties.
One difficulty for instance was that the piece of paper that I cut from the roll, no longer wrapped itself all the way around the box I was trying to cover. I was pretty sure it should have after I’d decided on how much I’d cut using skill and wisdom accumulated over the years.
Which obviously didn’t amount to very much. But hey at least I knew to save that piece in case it would be of use for a smaller present – or for me to patch up some botched piece or other.
In the end it all got so frustrating that I decided to phone a friend who I believed would be good at this kinda stuff.
When she told me that I needed to talk in really bad rhyme, wear trousers that were too big and falling off my ass, lots of gold chains and a baseball cap and keep pushing my hands out in front of me a lot saying Aha, aha every now and then, I figured she had got mixed up in the type of wrapping I was talking about.
In the end I decided to just wing it and cut another piece of paper, then used the first piece to patch a piece that I accidentally tore while folding a corner and decided that it would be grand anyway since the paper would just be ripped off by the recipient in anticipation of what was inside.
But this evening I think I did notice a wee grimace of disapproval from my better half (who is the recipient and just didn’t know it yet) and who is a dab hand at the fancy-dancy wrapping.
In fact she was going to insist on taking the paper off and wrapping it all nice and neat, so in the end I had to tell her that it was hers and she wasn’t allowed to rip the paper off before Christmas Day.
As a compromise she agreed that she could at least push it way back behind the tree so as not to interfere with the look of the lovely fancy-dancy wrapped presents that she has ready for delivery.
Next year I think I’ll buy one of those gift boxes…
No comments:
Post a Comment