Gifted givers

Some people are so easy to shop for they practically do the deed for you. One of my friends is obsessed with the heavy metal group Iron Maiden, and their merchandise is smattered with images of their mascot, Eddie, a zombie with an electrified Doc Brown hairdo and pale gray biceps the size of seal pups. His sneering face adorns clocks, car mats and action figures, which make for great gifts, assuming the giftee is a weirdo with a penchant for the macabre. That’s one item that was checked off my list before Labor Day.

Then there are those who are near impossible to find presents for this time of year. They’re the tricky ones, the ones who keep me on my toes, and I hate that. I’d much rather be off my toes. They get sore.

My father is a prime example of this. When I first started buying Christmas gifts for my folks, I figured he’d be the easy one; a former bar owner, he keeps a room in the house stocked with beer paraphernalia -- mirrors smeared with corporate logos and cardboard cutouts of improbably proportioned women wearing American flag bikinis. It’s a fantastic room. In a more just world it’d be a certified tourist attraction.

Mistakenly, I thought this would make things easy. A few clicks on eBay and I’d simply locate some obscure Budweiser memorabilia, a light-up sign featuring 3-D Clydesdales sipping suds from a keg or something, and boom. Done deal. Onto Uncle Hugh and his bizarre fixation on vintage Playboys.

Here’s the catch: You buy Dad a beer sign or a limited-edition frosted beer mug from scenic Holland, and into the room it goes, never again to be glimpsed by human eyes. Once in a while a new sign or mirror gets hung on the wall -- about every leap year, this happens -- but generally he keeps all his collectibles in a haphazard pile, perhaps anticipating how his belongings would be arranged after an epic flood or end-times earthquake. He calls this pile his retirement savings. He’s retired. And yet he still wears sweatpants until they’re as insubstantial as a layer of pollen. Curious.

With a guy like that, it’s a foolish endeavor to go with the obvious. So you’ve got to get creative.

This is where you turn gift-giving into an art form. It’s one thing to wave the white flag of surrender and buy something boring but practical, like tube socks or a nose hair trimmer. It’s another thing altogether to find that “Wow!” item, a gift that makes them weep like a whip-cracked baby.

The trick to solving this dilemma is to give it the brainpower you’d normally reserve for working out a complex physics equation. You can’t just wing it. Many holiday shoppers simply go to malls or local boutiques and browse the racks until something leaps out at them -- “Oh my gosh, Hubert will totally love this macramé candle holder made with the colors of the Bolivian flag!” This doesn’t always work, though, especially if you’re a selfish schmuck like me. I’ve attempted this method, and usually I just end up drawn to whatever items I’d want to see under my tree. Many a confused relative has walked away with Ninja Turtle beanie hats and video game controllers shaped like Flying V guitars. I don’t get a lot of phone calls.

To make my gifts a little more thoughtful, I started reserving time for brainstorming sessions. The typical one begins with me writing down everything I know about the person in question, even if it has no relevance to any gift I could possibly buy for them: social security number, criminal history, debit card access code, anything I can get my hands on. Then I review what I bought them the previous year so I don’t repeat myself. By the end of the session I’ve got their gift narrowed down to a few possibilities, with my final selection determined by how cheap it is.

At evening’s end, the reasoning goes something like this: OK, Bartleby is a 32 waist, but last year I bought him windpants with a picture of a mushroom cloud on the butt, so that’s irrelevant. He likes hip-hop, but I know less about hip-hop than I do about advanced software engineering, so let’s leave that one alone. He wears a lot of sweaters, but they’re all ugly, and it would be criminal of me to encourage this kind of behavior. Ah, I’ve got it! He’s a drunkard! I’ll just buy him a lot of liquor!

Indeed, when all other ideas fail, just buy people lots of liquor.

This is much the same thought process that people have anyway, just protracted and turned into an ordeal. It gets results, though. Rarely do I get a chance to catch my father off-guard and surprise him with something really nice, but a few years ago, that’s precisely what happened. In scouring the Internet, I tracked down a pair of women in Sabattus who make three-dimensional clay models of people based on photographs; email them a pic, and in a couple of weeks they mail you a small statue the size of an Academy Award. My father’s visage is ripe for this kind of interpretation, what with his shoulder-length hippie hair and a three-foot long triangle beard that could slice through chainmail. When he tore off the wrapping and saw his own sculpted mug staring back at him, he had to fight the tears from welling at the corners of his eyes. Pretty remarkable since he thinks crying is for sick toddlers and literally no one else.

All it took was a little creativity. These hard-to-shop-for family members can be vexing, but they’re also a fun challenge. Meet that challenge, and you’ll have a Christmas you won’t forget.

Now I need to start getting creative with my mother; I’ve already bought her every season of “The Golden Girls” on DVD. Time to start browsing for booze.