Geezer Gift Guide
Rufus W. Smedley, publisher of the very popular Geezer Digest, has just released the 2014 edition of The Geezer Gift Guide, which once again will help cloying, obligated relatives and halfhearted friends in selecting acceptable, harmless gifts for the increasing number of geezers living amongst us today. Next to spoiled brats and glazed-eyed teenagers – also increasing in number at a disturbing rate, geezers are notoriously difficult to buy gifts for. Using The Geezer Gift Guide in the dangerous and unpleasant task of selecting a gift for your geezer will help you to avoid his wrath and rejection of your gift. Some misfires in this area have resulted in banishment, extreme tongue-lashing, and even disinheritance of the gift-giver(s). To illustrate the dangers of buying an inappropriate gift for a geezer, there is the story of what happened to Grand Geezer Warren Buffet’s son, Howard, who for his father’s 84th birthday bought him a case of Pepsi, completing forgetting about his father’s huge investment in rival Coca-Cola. Howard was not only fired from his juicy job at Berkshire Hathaway, but was moved out of his forty room mansion to the garage apartment above the family’s horse barn! Be warned of the touchiness of offended geezers.
The Geezer Gift Guide begins with What you Need to Know about Geezers so as not to make any serious blunders in selecting a seasonal – or any – gift:
First, geezers by definition have traveled this old world for at least eighty years and therefore, they have been there, done that, and seen the movie! They have little or no needs as over a lifetime, they have accumulated everything that they need to make it from one day to the next. Their clothes are well-broken in so anything new feels stiff and itchy, baggy or too tight, wrong color or size, plus they don’t need the darn thing! So rule out clothes, sweater, scarfs, suits (heaven forbid!), shoes, etc. Hankies and socks are usually welcome but that is about it.
What Not to Buy: No new fangled gadgets! Ever! Geezers are technically challenged so the last thing you want to do is to antagonize them by giving them some electronic thing that they can’t get to work. No pads or pods or “i” anything! Most geezers have hearing aids anyway so these space age, 21st Century doodads cannot add one farthing of use or value to our beloved, set-in-his ways geezer.
Another type of gift to absolutely avoid buying for a geezer is cute or clever gift items, the thing you might buy at a Hallmark or TJ Maxx – or worse a box of overpriced foul tasting cheese from Hickory Farms. No three golf balls and a cutesy golf towel stuffed into a clear plastic tube. No mahogany wooden box with two decks of playing cards inside featuring an old timer holding a hickory shafted golf club. And the worst – the very worst would be a cribbage board! He already has two of these and he never did learn how to play the stupid game, besides
Finally, however grim this task seems to be, there in ONE gift that will please the well-seasoned senior citizen. This is something he uses all four seasons and he actually uses enough to wear them out and truly appreciates getting new ones. I give you THE WELLS LAMONT LINED LEATHER WORK GLOVES which cost no more the $15.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, POPS!
P.S. This guide offers no help in buying gifts for lady geezers, because their nature is such that there is NOTHING that they don’t love to receive so as to pile on their already overloaded shelves. They can’t have enough shoes or purses or blouses or baubles or fudge or money. They are in a different league altogether than their male counterparts. So this guide is no help in advising what to buy for these aging queens other than the gift buyer needs to bring lots of money to the mall.