Gentleman it’s been a week since Valentines Day which should be plenty of time for you to be back on speaking terms with your significant other. My wife was at her apartment in Vermillion, 385 miles away, when she received my Valentines gifts in the mail. Not having to see her disappointment in person helped ease this special day by for another year.

Maybe a buffer zone of 300 miles or more should be a regulation for any gift giving or receiving. Another stipulation I would encourage would be that after the gift is opened no phone calls in regards to the gift shall take place for at least 24 hours. This would give the gift receiver time to contact other potential gift receivers and compare gift complaints, questions, or comments.

My hope is that after 24 hours worth of contrast and comparison the recipient of the gift (my wife) will have discovered that others received something much worse. This would turn her initial feelings into a milder form of disappointment. So mild in fact that the gift giver (myself) may not even pick up on it from a bad phone connection 385 miles away 24 hours later.

This new gift giving format is still in the developmental stages and awaiting approval from congress, the FDA, and the Teamsters Union. These three organizations have a large number of male members so the “Gift Giving Treaty of 2007” shouldn’t encounter much opposition.

Call your congressman, voice your support, and never again have to stare desperately into the eyes of a disappointed woman as she opens yet another failed attempt at gift giving. I’m not saying you’ll never disappoint her again in other areas of your blissful life, I mean come on, we are men, and they are women.

Our ability to disappoint them is part of our genetic code, an unbreakable code, that has been around since the first caveman drug a saber tooth tiger home for dinner and she had a craving for wooly mammoth.

As he strolls triumphantly through the door of their cave she looks up and disappointedly grunts, “Oh…saber tooth tiger.” To which he grunts, “You don’t like it do you?” She grunts, “Oh, no it’s all right…I just…I like it.” He grunts, “You don’t look like you like it.” She grunts, “Well it’s just that I was hoping for a wooly mammoth, but this is fine.” He grunts, “Why didn’t you tell me you wanted a wooly mammoth?” She grunts, “I thought you would just know.” He grunts, “I lost three fingers and my left ear trying to kill this saber tooth tiger.” She grunts, “I appreciate that I really do but Oogta two caves down got a wooly mammoth and I just thought it would be kind of nice to have one too.”

He grunts and trudges off to find a wooly mammoth. Having lost his left ear he doesn’t hear a herd of them coming and dies in a stampede. She grunts, disappointed again, and moves in with Oogta.

If you were one of the few that didn’t disappoint your lovely lady this year, well there’s always next year, or tomorrow, or today, or five minutes from now, or …..