I am hopeless

It can't be that hard. It can't be that hard.

This, my mantra, as I walk through Tom Thumb clutching a roll of turquoise wrapping paper, scotch tape and white ribbon.

I know the concept, the essentials, what steps are supposed to be taken. But alas, as it is with driving a stick shift, I simply cannot do it. This has plagued me my entire life. I can't wrap a gift.

Back in the day, when I made it to high school, it was time for me to go to work. For generations upon generations, every person in my family would take a job at the family department store - wrapping gifts. Not for me. Everyone thought I was just trying to get out of it. But once they saw my work... Well, let's just say I was the first family member in the history of the store (opened in 1884) that had not served in the gift wrap department.

My mother had always told me that I had a unique sense of style and that any present I wrapped was beautiful and artistic. Found out that was a lie. Thanks Mom.

So instead of following the family legacy, my first job was taking polaroid pictures of Santa and whiny kids in the Children's Shop. I can say that gift wrapping was probably less stressful. Thanks Dad. I'm pretty sure that Santa was either drunk or self-medicated.

Ever since then, if I needed something wrapped I either got someone else to do it (by the way, Amazon does a good job with wrapping gifts before they send them - just make sure you'll be able to figure out which gift is which - but that's another story altogether), or I go for the cheesy gift bag option. Many times, I am too embarrassed to ask my friends for help. And I'm lazy.

I must mention here that in the last 10 years gift bags have come a long way.

So I'd been thinking about my handicap quite a bit lately, with all the Christmas and birthday gifts piling up. I thought to myself, this is ridiculous, how could I have made it this far in life without the ability to wrap a gift? In a wave of ambition I decided then and there that I would conquer this problem once and for all. (And I had to stop at TomThumb for girl supplies anyway).

Flash forward to me on the floor of my apartment surrounded by piles and piles of torn blue paper. Somehow tape had wound itself around the handles of the scissors making them ungrippable. The white ribbon was zigzagged across the room, And I'm pretty sure there was more tape stuck to my socks than to the actual tape roll. Complete disaster.

I mean, HOW do you make the damn triangles? Or more importantly, how do you hold the triangles down while trying to tape them at the same time?

So, I got out of my comfortable pajama pants, put my jeans back on, and headed to World Market for reinforcement.