The Commish Online www.thecommishonline.com
FOUL TERRITORY
Flowers - The Disposable Gift
May 9, 2003
With Mother's Day right around the corner, I thought this would be the perfect time to talk to men about the usefulness of flowers as a gift, especially if you live with the recipient of your thoughtful gesture.
When I was young and naive, I thought that flowers were the worst gift you could give because all that money was spent and a couple weeks later, you have nothing to show for it. I knew that women liked that stuff, but I always wanted to give something more material, something that would last until the apocalypse. Then I had to live with the stuff.
I'm not exactly approaching "midlife crisis" age yet, but a wife, two kids, and a dog tend to make me a little more mature than my days spent watching wrestling and football on Monday nights. The most important thing I've learned is that flowers make the best gift for the exact same reason I loathed them in the past. Once it started taking me five minutes to remove the pillows on the bed just to locate the mattress, I realized the last thing I need in the house is more stuff. Between my wife and kids, there are enough stuffed animals in the house to open a zoo. Candy for the significant other is always an option, but you don't want your wife or girlfriend to feel guilty while enjoying your gift. Little trinkets and mini statues show that you have no idea how to shop and you don't listen to what she wants, so you just picked something in your price range. Regarding small, inexpensive gifts, that leaves flowers (pun intended).
But flowers are expensive! Not true, inexperienced one. The perfect solution is your local grocery store. Sending flowers through a florist ruins the efficiency of flower giving for two reasons: high cost and a useless vase. If you are married, your wife already has a cabinet full of vases. Big vases, small vases, tall vases, short vases. The last thing you want to encourage is more vase accumulation. That just means more stuff in the house, the very item you are trying to avoid.
But the grocery store is a tacky way to buy flowers! Once again, not so, rookie flower buyer. Grocery stores actually have a decent selection of flowers now and they're always fresh because of high turnover. When you walk into your house with a bunch of flowers for your woman, you are an instant hero. Not only have you shown your lady that you took the time to hand pick a gift for her, you also saved about 75% compared to the florist and you have given your woman the chance to use one of her favorite vases. Best of all? When the occasion has come and gone, you are left with no extra stuff in the house and the memory stays with your woman forever. All this for under twenty bucks! Like I said, you are a hero.
