Hayter for December 10, 2023
“I am the worst gift-giver”
There comes a time in one’s life when you don’t care if you get anything for Christmas. It came early in my Dad’s life. Faris Hayter was good at so many things, but he couldn’t act worth a flip. “Daddy, do you like your new house shoes?” – “Oh, these are great! Who wouldn’t like ‘em?” I could tell right off that he didn’t want any house-shoes.
Dad was much better at giving gifts than accepting them. He gave Dennis and me our favorite gift ever, at a time when I was in the third grade and Dennis was in the sixth. I got a 24-inch J.C. Higgins bicycle. Dennis got a 26-inch. I could barely touch the pedals on his bike. Our next best gift was a BB gun that we got two years later. We could knock clothespins off the clothesline. At least we could until Mom put a stop to it.
Over the years, stuff like that ceased to interest me. Whatever I wanted was too expensive. And anything Kay wanted, required careful study. She likes jewelry, but I am the worst at picking it out. Clothing? Get real. There’s no way I can pick out women’s clothing. The times I’ve tried, Kay would accept it with complete sincerity just like my Dad… only she’s a better actor.
Yep, I’m no good at picking out clothing or jewelry. What I am good at is finding things you can throw, play with, or other things that look interesting. I may not know what it is, but I’ll know it when I see it. I tell you that to tell you this. I’m going online and I need help in selecting a gift for Kay. If I hear you turn the page, I’ll know you left me. – Here we go.
The first thing I see is one of those flying orb balls. One of those glowing plastic web-encased contraptions that generally have blue light in ‘em. It looks cool as all get out. I know because Kay used to have one. Within five minutes it refused to fly, roll, glow, or emit light. The commercials for the object look fantastic. They’re fragile as a baby mallard. Advertisers were bound to have destroyed 100 of them while shooting the commercial.
The second you let go of that thing, it will seek out the closest hard surface it can find. Wall, floor, ceiling, tree… It will hit it and hit it hard. Kay’s orb immediately found the backdoor. The collision caused an orange wire to break loose. You could see it plain as day, but to reach it you’d have to remove the plastic webbing and do some probing.
Kay
is going to send it in and get her money back, but I thought it might be nice
if I got her another one. Help her forget the loss of her first orb. And I
would do that, were I a complete idiot. What else can I find?
Ah, here’s one of those Japanese hand-held, 36-language interpreters. I wrote about it a while back. It’s under $100. I’ve wanted one for myself, but not enough to pay for it. Nor will I buy one for Kay. Let’s face it! We live in Texas. The only other language I hear is Spanish. Fortunately, well over half of the Latin Americans I run into have bothered to learn English. I love the Poles, French, and Dutch, but those who don’t speak English need to buy a handheld interpreter. I don’t run into enough Europeans to buy one myself.
Oh,
my goodness. It’s a $100 drone that costs as much as $1000 drone. How can
companies make a profit on a deal like that? It defies anything factual. If I
got out of the house more often, I might buy one of those things for Kay. It
turns out that this particular drone, known as the Black Falcon 4K, might be
one of “the best-kept secrets among social media influencers…” just as much as
I might be the best-kept secret of the San Francisco 49ers.
Let’s see, here’s something called a Tinickle Pro. It’s a three-legged contraption that has octopus sucker things on all three of its legs. The story goes that you can strap your phone to it and it will attach itself to anything but cat fur. Unfortunately, Kay would never remember where she stuck her phone. -- “Kay, the last time I saw your phone, it was stuck to the BBQ pit.” -- She can’t have stuff like that.
But,
she might like this. It’s called a Sure Sleep Mask. It looks somewhat like a
gray Pomeranian with straps. When you strap that thing on, it will put you to
sleep in 15 minutes. By the way, astronauts supposedly use it. Regular people
are easier to con than astronauts.
What
I learned from the ad is that the reason we can’t sleep is because our
brainwaves keep us on edge. The Sure Sleep thing closes down your brainwaves which
knocks you out, At this very moment, there are 43,590 people in Sweden now
sleeping thanks to their Sleep Masks.
Nowhere
in the ad was the price provided. What I found at the end of the ad were the
words “Check on availability and get
yours now.” Why don’t one of you order a
Sure Sleep Mask and get back to us in March? If you give it a thumbs up and it costs less
than $70, I’ll get Kay one for her birthday.
I appreciate you sticking with me as long as you did. I’ll finish up on this by my lonesome. For this to go well, I’ll need to make sure to only order something that can be returned, because that’s a happening thing.
end
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