Posted November 9, 2008

There are three things my mother believes. Geraldo is a journalist. Martha Stewart does her own cooking. And all her friends' children are the vice-presidents of large corporations.

Not a vice president of a corporation, mind you. THE vice president. It doesn't make any difference that were this true there would be nobody in the country working for minimum wage. This is why I am known to her friends as, "my son, the vice president writer."

One day, I said to my mother, "I wish there were a way I could make you realize there's nothing wrong with not being a vice president."

Here is are two tips. Never talk to your mother when your blood sugar is low. And never say to her, "if only there were a way..." even if you've just chugged a pint of melted Tootsie Rolls.

She thought for about eleven billionths of a second and then said the words you never want to hear from your mother.

"I'm glad you asked."

Her solution? While busy vice presidents only have time to buy their mothers gifts over the Internet, comparing prices, ordering what they want and having it shipped faster than you can say, "How to succeed in business without really trying," my mother pointed out that perhaps I had the time to shop for her gifts in a more loving, personal way.

By going through hell.

This means driving from from parking space to parking space, asking probing questions of salespeople whose product knowledge extends all the way to the description "like, you know, like" and finally, after a grueling afternoon that includes missing "Law & Order" reruns, many of which I've yet to see a hundred times, buying the perfect gift.

That being the only one on the shelf that doesn't look like it has been opened and repacked with the methodical care of a six-year-old cleaning up his room.

This way, when my mother opens a gift in front of her friends, one of whose children is the first American to own Mitsubishi (the company, not the car) and the other has twins who invented the chiropractor, there's no chance of having a tag fall out from www.boythiswaseasy.com.

After her friends ooh and ahh, and agree that I went through at least as much misery as their children, though probably a bit less, she will do something she couldn't do if I bought the gift online. She'll take it to the local mall for a refund.

Then she'll write a check to her friend's son, the son I believe is Al Gore because he is both the vice president and the inventor of the Internet, and he'll go online and order whatever it is she wished I bought her in the first place.

After which she'll settle down in her recliner and watch reruns of "Law & Order".

©2008 Jay Douglas