The Sweater Only a Mom (and Analyst) Could Love

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

The Sweater Only a Mom (and Analyst) Could Love

Take It in the Spirit Intended

By MATTHEW WEINER

Published: December 23, 2007

I LOVE giving gifts, but let’s not pretend: I prefer to receive them. Unfortunately, I’m one of those people who is never satisfied and mostly disappointed. It could be because I am an ungrateful jerk with a childish temperament who places too much emphasis on what is essentially a symbolic ritual. Or it could be the media’s fault.

As I see it, I am the victim of years of conditioning from movies and commercials. They prepared me for the gaudily wrapped package with its golden bow, the moment of intense expectation charged with mystery climaxing as the tissue crinkles and the prize is revealed. You are overwhelmed, and there are hugs and kisses and sometimes tears.

But the reality is that getting a gift is like being set up on a blind date. Like it or not, your friend or family member is sending you a message telling you in a coded way what they think you want, what you deserve and, on some level, who they think you are.

I’m not talking about business gifts. They are formal and often unexpected. A bottle of wine, a certificate for a massage, and those wonderful electronic trinkets: they are part of a different language. Everyone gets the same thing.

Family is where it breaks down. And my family is big on gifts. Everyone refuses to stop exchanging them, even though we have all declared them a waste of time and money.

A few years ago my parents gave me a crimson suede Nascar jacket. It was covered with sewn-on patches with emblems of Skoal chewing tobacco and Drakkar Noir cologne. On the back was a huge Budweiser insignia. I stared at it in awe, a fake smile pasted on my face, trying to determine if it was a joke.

As I slowly realized this was not an attempt at kitsch, I tried to avoid eye contact with my wife, who was astounded by its redness.

I hated myself for my feelings. It was just some stupid present. But I couldn’t quiet the voice in my head screaming, “You have no idea who I am!” Then it dawned on me that almost 20 years before, I had briefly been given the nickname of “Budweiser” by my sister. That explained the gigantic word “Bud” on the back in gold script. The gift had come from a sentimental place.

I felt so deeply awful, so guilty, that each Halloween, with the addition of a mullet wig and some hillbilly teeth, I try to become the person for whom the jacket was intended.

My brother thought I was being oversensitive. That was before he received a Ralph Lauren crew-neck sweater in a ritzy box from Nordstrom. It was Day-Glo orange, which may be some people’s favorite color, but my brother is a big guy and he thought it made him look like a prehistoric Creamsicle. O.K., maybe I said that.

Anyway, he decided that he would return it. “That’s what adults do,” he said. “They don’t take it as a measure of their self-worth.”

Hanukkah had come late that year, and now it was right after the New Year. He and I were headed to the San Fernando Valley to go golfing, so we stopped at the Fashion Square mall and went into Nordstrom to take advantage of its courteous and liberal return policy. But we were told that, despite the box, the sweater was not Nordstrom merchandise. Perhaps we should try Bloomingdale’s right across the food court.

Bloomingdale’s was also courteous, but unfortunately the orange crew-neck sweater was not part of its Chaps collection.

I figured that it was probably from Marshalls and had been placed in that Nordstrom box to hide the bargain. We went to Marshalls. Not theirs. Marshalls suggested we try T. J. Maxx right across the parking lot. We did. Not theirs.

We drove toward the golf course and it hit me that it was probably from Ross. It was the only place left and, as a Ross enthusiast, I knew there was one nearby. We went to the sales counter where the overwhelmed clerk grabbed the sweater and appraised it.

“Not your merchandise?” I asked in a leading way.

“No,” he said, “It’s ours. Just a minute.” He disappeared and came back with a tag gun and shot a price through the sweater. He handed it back and leaned on the cash register. “It’s $1.”

I explained to him that it had been bought before Christmas and that whatever price it was now reduced to should be recalibrated. He explained to my brother, who was now looking at the sweater with some kind of awe, that this was last year’s merchandise and that it had been at that price for some time. We stood there in silence. The clerk then asked, “Would you like the dollar?”

“Just give me the sweater,” my brother said, angrily grabbing it back.

We walked out to the car and started driving. I turned to him and quietly said, “Mom spent $1 on you.”

We did not go golfing.

The problem with gifts is the expectation — the truth is that one good experience can ruin you for life. For me it was two years into my marriage. I had graduated from film school and was living without a job, writing every day (or at least saying I was) and being supported by my wife’s starting architect salary and a small stipend from her mom.

My birthday came, and the gift I wanted was to be shot in the back of the head while I slept — to be mercifully put out of my misery before I gained any more weight or finished the extremely depressing movie I was writing.

My wife handed me a large, very heavy flat box. Inside was a silver Zero Halliburton briefcase.

Now, if you missed the ’80s, let me explain what this was. It was the ultimate briefcase. It was the one you saw in the movies, carried by Feds, moguls, guys in sports cars, drug dealers. It was the kind that was filled with rows of hundreds and then handcuffed to somebody’s wrist. I had admired one in a window at the mall. My wife had clocked that and delivered. It cost $300. Our rent was $800 a month.

It was so extravagant, so ridiculous, so desired. I was speechless. My wife knew what I wanted. I wanted to feel successful. I wanted to go somewhere everyday with my papers in that gleaming hand-held Learjet.

When I saw that gift, I knew that no matter what I felt like, she somehow saw me as the kind of person who carried that thing. She somehow saw me as a success. And yes, there were hugs and kisses and tears.

Matthew Weiner is the creator and the executive producer of the AMC television series “Mad Men,” and was an executive producer on “The Sopranos.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/fashion/...1&ref=style