all wrapped up.

While it's been established that I am excellent at picking out presents, I am hopeless at wrapping them. Honestly, I just don't get gift-wrapping. I like the idea of increased anticipation - look, a present for me, and yet I cannot immediately tell what it is by looking at it! That's a great idea! But that's really the only purpose of gift-wrap, to cover something up temporarily. It does not have to look pretty or enticing, because it's just paper. The enticement is that there is an unknown present waiting inside.

Who cares about the paper? I know there are people who carefully open presents by only cutting at the tape sites so as not to damage the paper. I suspect that those people do not understand about gifts. Maybe they're all thinking back to when they were eight years old and their mothers bought a refrigerator, which came inside a giant cardboard box. In that case, the wrapping is the best part, and I'll even extend that case to include items wrapped in bubble wrap. But for the most part, the paper is only the parsley on the plate next to the filet mignon and garlic mashed potatoes. I grew up in a family of tearers - messy and impatient people who want to get inside to the good stuff, recklessly destroying everything that might be in the way.

At some point, I did want to learn to wrap presents properly, because I was giving away presents that looked like they had been wrapped by blind three-year-olds, and all my friends had their mothers do it. So I asked my older sister to teach me, which she patiently did as I took careful notes of her steps. From that point, I knew the approximate steps in wrapping presents, but really only if they were box-shaped. Even then, things still turned out looking like they had been wrapped by myopic three-year-olds. The difference between my wrapping and that done by all those tidy Stepford moms was all in the details. My tape pieces were too long and too frequent, and my edges were crooked. My corners were not crisp, and my gift labels were made from scrap pieces of wrapping paper. That last one was something I picked up from my mother, and I've never seen it done anywhere else. I think that some mothers just set out trying to keep their children from ever becoming socially acceptable.

At some point, I gave on wrapping paper and started using bags instead. These are much easier in that all you do is stuff some tissue paper on top, and you are done. I recycled bags that were given to me and hoped no one noticed that the tissue paper was getting pretty wrinkly. I just hoped that added effect.

By now, I've pretty much given up altogether. I'll still use bags for non-boxy items or gifts with multiple parts. But for the most part, I do the best I can with my myopic three-year-old wrapping skills and am done with it. I use discount paper with no bows or ribbons, and I make labels using scraps from the paper. I take my cue from my dad, who once wrapped cash by putting it in an old peanut can and wrapping it like bubble gum by going around the cylinder with paper and then twisting the ends. In some ways, that's even more effective in wrapping paper's real purpose: I certainly had no idea what I might find inside that crinkly mess, and I was a little afraid to find out.

Life is much too short to spend a lot of time wrapping or opening presents. It's all just another metaphor. Beauty is skin-deep. Don't judge a book by its cover. And finally, stop judging the wrapping job and open the present, already.