Gift Cards

13

This day has just evaporated on me. I need to get something written or the day will be gone. Dianne’s birthday is tomorrow and yes, I caved and I got her a gift card. I was totally lost on what I might get her. So, a card at the mall card shop and a Sears gift card(GC). Ever since I have decided the best I was going to do this year was give gift card and e gift cards. I have been trying to justify this crude, rude method of giving some how in my values system.

Gift carding is like so many experiences of our times designed to be swift, efficient and cosmetically acceptable. The action looks good and who will decline a gift card…hey it’s a gift card from the very bottom of my heart. I get a coupe of gift cards a year and I have learned to expect the card and build the card into my gift getting experience. Thinking about receiving the GC my GC made me think. I usually get a gift card to Best Buy, Barnes and Nobel or CompUSA mainly because one of these store is on the way over to the house and he has just to stop in and get the card. Cool, efficient over and done. I have grown to love these cards I get from my son because usually I use them to get a book that I can read during the season I get it, whether the season be Father’s Day(Summer) or Christmas( Winter) Since I am usually in the middle of a book during these periods I donot mind waiting till I have enough time I can slip away and wonder through the store of choice to find my “gift”.

My drawback to gift cards is many times it’s difficult to find the vedor of the specific card open on Christmas Eve when you might get the card or for sure trying to find a book on Christmas Day. I carefully must slip the card into my wallet or back pack then and pray I don’t loose the $20.00 piece of plastic.

Receiving a gift, either wrapped in festive paper and ribbons or in the ubiquitous “wrapper” complete with white tissue paper stuffed into the top giving the illusion of a wrapped gift, is all together different then getting the GC. You have the gift right then and there. A pen is a pen, a book you have right now. You can sit down when the festivities calm down and crack it’s spine and get immediately lost. Same with ipods, soft ware, mp3 players, dvds, cd’s glovers and socks. You have them there and then. Someone thought about you enough to make, get, or order these things for You/me. To me this is the ideal and I swear next year I am gifting real gifts. Nice, real books and gadgets that a person well feel charmed to receive and will b anxious to be left alone so they can study the gift loser and enjoy the gifts very passion. I will have to spend time contemplating the person, quizzing and questioning that person to be sure of what they like and want they do not like and what they do not already have. And what I think would be the best gift I can give to them.