Sugarplum Conspiracy

I totally suck at wrapping gifts.

To be honest, I think it's a failing of my gender. Guys in general can't seem to get their heads around this seemingly simple task. It's not that we don't understand the concept or have any experience wrapping things up (fiberglass insulation, burritos, condoms). It's more the fact that when you're wrapping a gift you aren't using pneumatic staple guns and polyurethane wood sealer - you're dealing with something entirely different and sinister

Wrapping paper.

Along with irons and toilet paper spools, wrapping paper ranks at the top of the list of guy-baffling technologies. Then there's the issue of scotch tape -- which is it's own mess altogether (especially if you're not careful and the open end falls back on to the invisible roll and disappears entirely- which in my case is a problem that only an electron microscope can fix).

All this adds up to the real problem with wrapping presents, which is that it's a royal pain in the ass.

There's this school of thinking out there that wants to coordinate everything. These are the people who buy specific types of Christmas trees and only decorate them with certain color lighting and ornaments so that the tree somehow compliments the color scheme of the room it's sitting in. I mean come on people -- it's a Christmas tree! It's supposed to be festive and gaudy, covered with strings of popcorn and ornaments that your kid made in school. Besides, there's no way it can truly accent a decorative scheme -- it's a fucking tree! It's not supposed to be inside at all -- which is why we built the damn house in the first place.

A tree that goes with the decor -- what are you, an ewok?

But that's what people do -- and the epidemic seems to be spreading, because it seems like the people who make and sell holiday wrapping paper are doing their best to get people to coordinate the colors of their presents with the "theme" of the tree -- which is just not right.

My whole goal in wrapping a gift, the only reason I'm even bothering to wrap it at all is that I don't want the person who's getting the gift to know what it is. What I'm not doing is decorating the present with festive coverings -- which is probably the real reason it's such a troubling task for me to complete. I'm not thinking like an interior designer when I'm wrapping presents -- My real goal here is to somehow convince a six-year old that the remote controlled spider-shaped present under the tree isn't a remote controlled spider (yet).

So when I'm wrapping something, I'm trying to cover it -- which would be no big deal if I was using duct tape. But what I'm dealing with here is wrapping paper. You don't measure it twice and cut once. You don't square it with laser levels or plumb lines. You just eyeball the size and then do that trick where you push the scissors all the way through the paper in one cut (which always goes somehow wrong for me). My mother could slice out a perfectly-sized piece of paper in one quick motion -- but whenever I try it looks like some drunk driver got a hold of the wheel.

Then you get into these places you've actually managed to cover three sides of the thing you're wrapping. But when you get to the final side there's so much extra paper there that you can't make it work just by using the 'fold it like a paper airplane' trick. A smart person would undo the tape, cut it to a better size and go from there. But when faced with a dilemma like this, a guy like me only sees two options:

1. Continue folding the paper until it resembles the shape you need.
2. Grab all the excess paper and make a single cut midway between your hand and the present.

Neither of these solutions really help, because then you're stuck with either one side of your present that's so thick it won't stay folded, or a whole mess of uneven flaps that end up getting taped all over the place.

On the other end of the spectrum you get these odd-sized rectangular presents that you're tring to wrap with squares of paper - which inevitably ends up with that one present you've wrapped almost all the way except for that one side -- and when you fold the two ends of the paper over they don't exactly meet in the middle. First you try pulling harder on the paper like it's a roll of paper towels or something, but when that doesn't work you've got to figure out what to do next.

Perhaps a smart person would swallow their pride, cut out a whole new longer piece of paper and start the whole process over -- but come on, do I look like a wussy?

The guy solution here is an easy one. Just take one of the scraps of paper left over from the other presents you've wrapped and use it to cover up the hole.

Or "Spackle-wrapping," as I like to call it.

The problem with this approach is that to graft that extra piece of paper onto the present you need tape, and lots of it.

I don't care what anyone says, invisible tape isn't.

You can run your fingers over it a million times, but it's still gonna look like that line of stitches on Frankenstein's forehead. If the gift is for a little kid it's no problem, but this sort of thing always seems to happen to me when I'm wrapping presents for women. The kind of women who immediately notice these sorts of flaws and use them to make judgements about my status as a potential mate.

I don't need that kind of hassle, so whenever I'm faced with a problem like this I use the solution I've always used. Put as many of those pre-folded stick-on bows that I can find across the ugly spot on the present until the offensive area is completely covered up.

Let's hear you call me stupid now, honey.

[Listening to: Nonpoint, "To The Pain"]