Stocking stuffer for a new president

Dec. 10, 2016

What do you give a new president for Christmas — one who has everything and puts his name on everything he touches?  It’s gotta be huge, whatever it is.

Mind you, I have in mind a lump-of-coal-type gift, not a gift-type gift.  I am not one of those build-walls-bleeding-women-imprison-opponents-kiss-Putin-on-the-lips folks.

I’m the other kind of folk, part of the majority of Americans who didn’t vote for this little orange man who enjoys grabbing women by the genitals.

There’s a debate among certain friends about how to handle the next four years. There’s the “let’s go to Washington D.C., for the march on Jan. 21” friends; there’s the “let’s keep an accurate list of every lie he tells” friends; there’s the “let’s do exactly what Mitch McConnell did when he said he would work to make sure everything Obama did would fail” friends; there’s the “if you love our country you have to support whoever is president” friends; there’s the wishy-washy literary friends — the ones with the endless supply of New Yorker and New York Times political cartoons.

So how does a political shopper decide what to do? How do we choose the gift this new president needs?

Hmm, what he really needs … I have it! … a mother to tell him, “You better watch out, because if you make that face again it might get stuck permanently!” Nope, too late; it already happened.

How about his name on a building? Right here in TC? This guy likes seeing his name in BIG LETTERS on BIG SHINY BUILDINGS! Wait, we may not have a new one of those, after all.

How about a charitable donation in his name? Hmmm, nope. He probably wouldn’t actually donate it.

How about a new tie — the world’s safest gift, the familiar long, slim box that fairly screams, “I love you, dad, but I didn’t have time to get you a real gift!” Well, no; I shop locally, and this guy only wears ties made in China.

Now I’ve lost my train of thought. (And there’s a foot-notable gift quote to smack back at me, all you readers who voted for the new president and don’t appreciate my sense of humor.)

The hunt for the perfect gift is, as the Little Prince said,  “the most difficult thing.” (When at a loss for what to think about strange things, such as the election of a little orange man who grabs women by their genitals, I always turn to “The Little Prince” for answers.) 

If I can’t think of something that would make the little orange man happy to receive it, then how about a gift that would make me happy to give it? Say one of those hanky-and-socks combination sets from Montgomery Ward my uncle used to give us kids. Or say that $5 birthday check my grandma sent me until I was 30? There’s no earthly way they could have thought that I would be happy to get them, so it must be that it made them happy to give them.

Is this what they mean by “giving is better than receiving”?

Is it enough that my gift to this new president makes me more happy than he is made by

receiving it? Yes, of course. It makes all that sense in the world — or at least it makes as much sense as the notion that this little orange man who enjoys grabbing women by the genitals could be elected president.

So, returning to the task at hand, what would make me happy to give him? All I can think of is something big and shiny and suitable for someone only interested in himself. A mirror? Fitting for a narcissist, but too obvious.

How about a box set of “Saturday Night Live” greatest hits? I know he watches. I hesitate, though, because of this guy’s execrable rhetoric. Him saying the phrase “greatest hits” is going to come out of his mouth wrong and upset me all over again.

Let’s settle this gift thing the same way I settled myself after the election. I made peace with myself by pledging I will calm down, smile, and have fun with it. Existential issues of global importance aren’t all that scary, once you get over the initial shock. Here we have a little orange man who grabs women by the genitals and is a “Saturday Night Live” watcher and he’s president! Of the U.S.! How can this not be fun? How can the next four years not be a hoot? Don’t give me those alligator tears over nuclear war and global warming and racism and Silvio Berlusconi-style democracy. 

When in doubt, I always say — and I say it often since the election of this little orange man who enjoys grabbing women by the genitals — go with your gut instinct. Buy the gift!

So, I’m getting him a monogrammed T-shirt from one of those foreign mail-order places, where cheap items are made for the new president’s company to sell to his out-of-work supporters who are pissed about the flight of American jobs abroad. 

It’s a T-shirt with a message. Not one of the comic strip Pogo T-shirts my old friend Tim Green wore, but a new T-shirt with a BIG, HUGE message — XXL — monogrammed in gold: “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

Wait, that’s a Pogo saying!