Gentlemen as your reading this the beautiful bouquet of flowers you bought your lovely wife for Valentines Day are turning into potpourri. The big heart shaped box of chocolates has been reduced to a few of the horrible pink marshmallow centered things, the kids won’t even eat those. You know this because of the little finger hole you’ll find poked in the bottom made while they were franticly looking for the last caramel or mint. Most boxes of chocolates come with the little map now so you don’t have to poke holes in the bottoms to find the filling you desire. Lastly, the $80.00 negligee that the curvaceous manikin in Victoria’s Secret convinced you to buy is stuffed in the drawer with the ones from various Valentines of yesteryear, as your wife lounges in the free t-shirt you got for guessing the age of the angus at “Dan’s Bait & Butcher Shop.”

It’s over for another year and ladies in case you haven’t noticed most of us men aren’t very good at buying you presents. It’s not that we don’t try, it’s that we just don’t know, and as we all know you sure won’t tell us. Ask us what we want, go ahead, we won’t give you a trick answer, as a matter of fact here’s what we’ll do, now this may seem crazy but hang with me on this. We will tell you exactly what we want, and whatever it is that we tell you that we want, well, it is exactly what we want. We won’t say new socks would be nice and secretly hope you surprise us with diamonds and a trip to the Bahamas. No, we will thoroughly enjoy the new socks. Do you know why? Because we asked for them!

Okay ladies do you see how this whole thing works now? We ask, you tell, you get, we happy. I know, I know, you just would like to be surprised, well you’ll continue to be surprised by fuzzy slippers and cheese graters if you don’t agree to these terms. This would help eliminate the sorry sight of a man shuffling through the mall muttering and wild eyed as time runs out on another gift search. It’s not pretty, especially when you’re the one rocking back and forth sucking your thumb in the fetal position in front of a rack of women’s clothing. “If I buy a size that’s too big she’ll think that I think she’s overweight, but If I buy a size to small she’ll think that that’s the size I wish she was….” This will continue until security escorts you to the cash register and demands that you buy a gift certificate and remove yourself from the store.

So for the remainder of this year let’s just try the “we ask, you tell, you get, we happy” approach to special occasions. My wife doesn’t have a choice, mall security requires a list of what she wants be mailed to them at least one week prior to my arrival as to assure the availability of the requested items. It’s a very nice arrangement, my wife gets what she wants and I don’t have to hold any manikins hostage to negotiate more time to find that perfect gift.

“The flowers are dead, the candies all gone, she’s got that old t-shirt on.”