Wrapping Paper Is Of The Devil

I love giving gifts….absolutely love it. The excitement and jubilation on the face of the gift recipient is totally awesome. It is just the wrapping of the gift that causes me to fume to the point of inevitable internal combustion. The problem with wrapping paper is that it is so frail that at any point one gentle tug that becomes one-millionth of a pound too much force results in torn paper. Then what do you do? Sure, you could start completely over, assuming you have enough paper left, or if you don’t mind driving back to the store to get another roll because you didn’t buy two rolls like you told yourself you should because you knew this would happen. Or you could just try to force back together the fragments of paper and sloppily slap on a piece of tape in hopes no one will notice. However, this will just not work if the tear is bigger. Outside of starting over, the major strategy with the larger tear is to cut another piece of wrapping paper and patch up the gaping hole. However, as you get more and more tears, the whole thing becomes some sort of disturbing, disjointed patchwork quilt of wrapping paper. The patchwork solution also has the potential to result in a terrible gift-giving faux pas. Say you pick one of those cutesy wrapping papers for an anniversary that has inspiring words like love, hope, joy, dedication and the like written all over it. Depending on the words/letters used, the patchwork solution can result in overlapping words with unintended consequences, “Oh honey, look at this paper. How sweet. Love, joy, hoe, slut…what…what the hell kind of paper is this anyway? Cool Ranter, you ruined my anniversary.” Besides wrapping paper being ever so delicate, you can run into other problems such as: cutting the paper too small, therefore leaving you in the same conundrum as the large tear with a sizeable hole to cover up; cutting the paper too big, leaving excess paper that has no place to go, so it crumples, scrunches and bunches into a pile that you simply can do nothing with but try to mash down and apply a huge piece of tape on, wishing like holy heck’n fire that the other guests don’t start wondering why your present, which you sneakily tried to force into the corner and place under other presents, has some type of freakish goiter on its left side. So when you take into combination the potential pitfalls of using wrapping paper and a guy like me who barely has the requisite rudimentary skills required to fold one’s own clothing, wrapping a present is most assuredly never going to be a successful venture.

I had a wedding to attend yesterday, and had selected a couple of pre-designated gifts from the store’s registry a couple of weeks ago. I have wrapped many a present in my lifetime, however on nary an occasion has the resultant colorful parchment encased gift been deemed as Macy’s customer service booth worthy, much less “passable”, experiencing many, if not all, of the aforementioned gift wrapping disasters during every attempt to wrap my presents. Despite being fully self-aware of my past gift wrapping debacles, and even more cognizant of the less than cooperative nature of wrapping paper as a gift concealing medium, yesterday I went to the nearby drug store and picked out some nice wrapping paper with “wedding-related” words such as bliss, honor, and commitment inscribed on it, along with an accompanying ribbon and bow. Why didn’t I just go with the gift bag you ask? Because that is the way of the uninspired, languid gift-giver who should be disemboweled, their entrails spilling on the ground for the swine to feast upon. Ok, fine, I use them sporadically. Most often in between futile attempts to master the excruciatingly difficult art of folding a piece of paper around a square box. The pattern is usually thus: try to use wrapping paper and get handed my ass on an exquisite silver-plated platter by said wrapping paper; success with gift bag; success with gift bag; work up courage to give wrapping paper another whirl, only to have my soul pummeled yet again and my paper-folding inadequacies made apparent to all the world; gift bag success; gift bag success; Damn it, I will not let wrapping paper beat me. I am taking down this stupid wrapping paper and giving it the business….paper quickly retorts with “don’t F with me Mr. Thumbs” and promptly allows it’s infrastructure of fragile fibers to tear and shred on every corner of the present; and on and on goes the cycle infinitum. For this special occasion, I figured I would try a traditional gift presentation and try the wrapping paper once again even though I needed to complete a practically insurmountable task: wrapping not one, but two gifts.

I started with present one, and measured out what I believed was an appropriate amount of paper. I turned into Mr. Shaky Hands and cut across the length of the paper, leaving in my wake a jagged, disfigured paper edge. Well, that’s OK, I thought, I will just fold it underneath and no one will be the wiser. Of course, by folding it over, the paper was now not long enough, and I was not completely sure the roll was big enough to start over and complete my other present as well (no smart allecks out there, I did not buy the second roll while I was at the store). I guess it was patchwork solution then. I cut a hole-matching size piece of paper, and finished up the first present. Before setting the present aside, I had read the paper and made a ghastly discovery? Oh great, the overlaid words read “I hope your marriage goes down in a ball of flames.” Hmmm, what were the odds? Fine, it didn’t say that. The repaired portion actually displayed the ever-inspiring, yet cryptic, words, “hmnerh, nsdbugw, and sdbsghfdb.” Oh well, it was on the bottom and I was sure they wouldn’t notice. I then started on present number two. The piece was cut way too big, however I had enough paper left, and promptly cut another piece almost nearly as big. What kind of retard does this I thought? The next few minutes were then spent fighting with the paper, attempting to make it bend to my will, but ending up with a wrinkled, multi-folded piece of paper that looked as if a bum had crumpled it to stuff inside his shirt to keep him warm on a cold New York winter’s night. I was getting downright pissed off at this point, and decided that I would teach the paper a lesson by chopping it down to a smaller size so I could more easily manage it. My seething anger fueled a series of feverish cuts, slices and dices with my scissors, which reached a fevered pitch nearly resulting in me releasing a bone-chilling maniacal laugh like some type of deranged barber in a B-level horror movie. At this point, I really just wanted this all done. I mashed down the edges, causing several tears on the corners, and reached for the tape, only to realize that I had used the rest of the roll. Oh come on, I thought, and stomped off to the kitchen like a toddler looking for extra adhesive. Of course, the only thing I found was double stick tape, whose most glorious quality is that the best thing it sticks to is your skin, making for a wonderful time trying to hold down the wrapping paper with one hand while trying to put the tape on with the other and having to somehow separate it from your person rather than tearing it away from the paper which of course leaves large white patches of missing coloring and words on the wrapping paper. I was finally able to tape down the crumpled lump of paper on each end, repaired the tears on my pitiful looking present, and slumped down in a heap of exasperation and defeat. Not that I did such a thing at the end of all this….I am totally asking for a friend…but does throwing a scotch tape dispenser across your apartment in a fit of pure, unadulterated frustration and hatred with the ferocity of a major league baseball pitcher while letting loose with a spittle-propelled flurry of expletives constitute an anger management problem?
　

Gym Junkie

That’s right ladies, I will be discussing my body in this post. Fortunately, you will only have to endure the torture for a very short time until a transition into the meat and potatoes of the story. Like many of my friends, I grew up an active kid and ate fairly well, thereby staying in reasonably good shape throughout my teen years. I never had an Adonis-like body by any stretch of the imagination, but managed to keep my weight relatively under control. As I moved into my twenties, like many men, my job had become sedentary, the meals contained a few more calories and the exercise level decreased to a non-existent level. The pounds sneakily crept their way onto my frame, however the growth was at such a sluggish rate that the change would have gone relatively unnoticed save for the infrequent visits to the forever truthful, yet heartless, scale in my bathroom. Over the next few years I put on a few more pounds and simply convinced myself that women like a man with “meat on their bones” so everything was fine and dandy in my delusional brain. Although I am unable to pinpoint the exact day or even year, at some point in my late twenties or early thirties, I had the girth-related epiphany that other members of my gender have experienced for eons (or at least since the advent of the mirror). It happens as you are walking by the bathroom mirror, most typically right after getting out of the shower, and you catch a sidewise glance of your profile. In a peripheral vision of terror, you realize that sack of flab you have been sucking back in year after year has finally began to push back and it will not be restrained by your meager abdominal muscles any longer. This experience then forces men to go through at least three distinct stages: 1) Denial- “No, seriously. How did someone get a fun house mirror in here without me even noticing?”; 2) Self-Loathing- “Well fatty, looks like you went from a meaty, manly man to some guy who should be wearing a shirt that says Baby on Board or Bun in the Oven.”; and finally, 3) Acceptance of Deterioration of Physical Appearance- “I thought it was so funny when I used the line ‘Hey ladies, my eyes are up here’. Apparently, their gazes had not wander as far south as my inflated ego had convinced me of and they were gawking in awe at a whole different protrusion.”

So for the last few years I have tried, without success, to get back down to my high school, or at least college, weight. My most recent attempt at battling the bulge has included utilizing the small gym available at the apartment complex where I live. Yesterday morning, I trudged out of bed at approximately 5:30, stumbling around in a sleep-deprived stupor while searching for my workout attire. After getting dressed, grabbing a bottle of water and my trusty Iphone for musical accompaniment, I started my half-awake walk to the other end of the complex where the gym is located. In all the times that I have gone to the gym this early, I have never seen another soul utilizing the facility, however on this fateful morning, I approached the entrance at the same time as a slender, squinty-eyed, meek looking gentleman of approximately 65 years of age. Our sparsely equipped gym has two treadmills, a weight machine with several stations, one elliptical, one stationary bicycle and an extreme insurance liability that takes the form of an old, rickety 1980’s mini trampoline with uneven legs and whose outer elastic cover is haphazardly patched together with duct tape. For every prior workout session, I have utilized the elliptical for my cardio workout. I was extremely disappointed as the older gentleman ambled his way over to the elliptical, leaving me to shoot daggers at the old man while I reluctantly stepped up on the treadmill, all the while steaming at the fact that my planned workout had now been utterly ruined by Mr. Magoo. The gentlemen then began a series of disjointed, uncoordinated movements that were pitiful attempts to fight against the inertia of the stubborn, stagnant elliptical. After approximately twenty seconds, he finally was able to begin some semblance of proper elliptical usage, and then after another minute or so he promptly stepped off the machine and moved over to the stationary bike. The bike is an older model, which has the handles that move backward and forward like the handles on an elliptical when you pedal. The man clambered astride his one-wheeled, metal -framed foe and encountered the same problems that he had with the elliptical, struggling mightily to move the pedals and handles in unison. In an encore of the elliptical performance, as soon this individual started utilizing the equipment successfully, he promptly ceased after about a minute. Anti-Jack Lalanne then shuffled, shuffled, shuffled to the rear of the room and stepped cautiously onto the trampoline, where he proceeded to take two gentle bounces on the stretchy, plastic layer, taking care not to allow his feet to actually lose contact with the surface of the trampoline, and then gingerly dismounted the trampoline. It was starting to dawn on me that this unsuspecting senior citizen, for whatever reason, had brilliantly taken the “a little taste of this…a little taste of that” restaurant concept and had seamlessly transitioned it to the world of fitness by creating a veritable appetizer sampler in our cramped workout room. Weights were obviously not an option for this gentlemen as he did not even put forth an effort to try the pulley-filled apparatus in the middle of the room, and instead simply delicately ran his hand across the side of the weight machine, examining it with inquisitive eyes like Indiana Jones inspecting, for the first time, the Sacred Sword of Anzakalakabar II. Before exiting our shared environment, the man stopped at the water cooler, made a motion to grab a cup from the tiny plastic dispenser, but then dropped his hand away knowing he had not exerted enough energy to justify enjoying one single droplet of nature’s essential elixir. He slowly exited the door, went outside to the pool area which adjoins the weight room, dipped his hand in both the hot tub and swimming pool, and then completed two leisurely laps around the pool. After he left the gated pool area, I moved across the room and took possession of my mighty fitness birthright: the glorious elliptical. Approximately five minutes later, the gentleman returned, stuck his key in the door, paused, took it back out and walked away again. Well, that was strange.

This morning, I returned to the gym and began my workout without the presence of my elderly compatriot, however after I had worked up a small sweat in short fashion on the elliptical in strode the same gentlemen. He proceeded to go through almost the exact same time-limited exercise routine, leaving out the probing of the weight machine, and of course, having to substitute a struggle on the elliptical with a split-second jaunt on the treadmill as I was not about to give up my coveted spot to this yahoo. And again he went back outside, dipped his digits in the pool and hot tub, completed his two customary circumnavigations of the pool and disappeared into the cool morning air like a phantom. Have you ever talked to someone who always seems to stay thin, and you ask what they do to stay in impeccable shape? They often answer your query with the smug, “I work out a little.” Well, folks, I never believed them either until this guy came along. It was like seeing Bigfoot for the first time with your own eyes. You know these svelte poeple existed, but you just never had proof their absurd self-reported fitness methods really worked. But I had witnessed it myself : this guy was thin, was the epitome of “I work out a little” and had laid bare his sacred workout routine to me like a glorious vision over the course of the last two days. With a quick change to my normal exercise routine , and taking up the “just a little” exercise philosophy I should be back in peak physical condition in no time. A big thank you goes out to my mystery metabolism mentor, whoever you might be.