One day early last December, I told my husband K— that I was going to do some Christmas shopping, and I asked him what he wanted for the holiday.  He jotted down some things on a piece of paper and gave the list to me.  It read, “shaver, socks, underwear.”  I said, “That’s what you want me to get you for Christmas?” and he replied, “Well, that’s what I really need.  How about your list?”  I jotted some things down on a piece of paper and gave the list to him.  It read “shaver, socks, underwear.”  He balked.

“Whoa!” he said.  I can’t shop for these things!”

“Why not?” I asked, “They’re what I really need, too, and they’re the same things on your list.”

He replied, “It’s different, that’s why not.  A shaver is something very personal.  How would I know what a woman wants in a shaver?”

“Good point,” I agreed, “but surely you’re not suggesting that I know anything about removing facial hair.”  He reached for the list he’d given me, scratched off “shaver” and gave it back.  I did the same.

He looked at the second item on my list: socks.  “This is no good, either,” he said with a frown.  “I don’t know what sock size you wear.”

“Hmm,” I said, “That’s funny—I know what sock size you wear.  I also know your collar size, your sleeve length, your inseam, your waist, and I could pick out a tie to go with every color dress shirt you own from memory.”

“Al-l-lright, forget the socks,” he said, reaching for the list he’d given me and scratching off the word “socks.”  I did the same.  “That leaves underwear,” he continued grimly.  “Well, that’s just impossible.  I can’t go into a lingerie department and start pawing through the undies.  People think…things.”

“Nobody would ‘think…things’ unless you went into the dressing room to try them on,” I countered.  “Do you think I’m exactly comfortable sorting through the Jockey Y-fronts in the men’s foundations department?”  K— stared at me as though I were an unwelcome apparition that had materialized in his living room unbidden—maybe the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come—and which he could make go away by concentrating hard enough.  When he blinked and I was still there, he concluded that I was not an undigested bit of beef or a fragment of an underdone potato*.  Then he folded my Christmas list crisply, slipped it inside his shirt pocket, and did what all spouses do at difficult moments: he just walked away.

A couple of days later, it seemed to me that someone had been going through my closet.  “Uh-oh,” I thought.  “If K— thinks he’s going to figure out my underwear size by looking at my jeans, we’re both in trouble.”  Any men reading this who have never shopped for women’s clothing may be wondering, “What’s the problem?”  After all, a man’s underwear size is the same as his trouser size, i.e., his waist measurement.  But consistency in women’s clothing sizes there is not.  A pair of women’s underwear the same size as even a slender woman’s jeans would be roughly the size of a hot air balloon**.

One evening shortly thereafter, K— announced that he wouldn’t be home for dinner because he’d be doing some Christmas shopping after work.  Hours later, he came home empty-handed with a discouraged look on his face.  I asked him how it had gone.  “Fine,” came the curt and unconvincing reply. “Oh,” I said, “that’s good,” and left it at that.  I’ve learned not to press.

The next night, much the same thing happened…except he didn’t leave the house.  After dinner he went into his office and shut the door.  For a couple of hours I heard him tapping at his keyboard and occasionally dialing the telephone and having a hushed conversation.  When he came out, I asked him, “What were you up to in there?”  “Nothing” was the predictably succinct answer.

The third night, he was just unbearably sulky.  After a silent dinner and an absolutely morose evening, I said, “Look, tell me what’s on your mind or I’m making plans to be anywhere but here tomorrow night.”  (Ultimatums: men hate them, but they always work.)  That did the trick.  “Is there anything I can get you besides underwear?” he implored.  After some prompting and prodding, the story came out.  It turned out my suspicions were correct.  He’d gone to Victoria’s Secret (thinking that this is obviously where women buy underwear), and after mustering the courage to talk to a saleswoman, he said he wanted to buy some underwear for his wife.  The saleswoman asked him my size, and when he told her what he thought was my size, she said they didn’t carry specialty items and that they might have to be custom made.  He left the store perplexed.  “I couldn’t figure it out,” he said, “I thought some of the things there would fit you.”

The night at the computer and on the phone had been spent searching the Internet high and low for women’s underwear in double-digit sizes.  To no avail, I might add.  I explained to him what had gone wrong with his plan.  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he observed when I told him that a woman’s underwear size and her pinky finger ring size are usually about the same.  In response I pointed out that most women’s clothing designers are men.  And then I took pity.  I was disappointed, to be sure, because K— really has beginner’s luck in a lot of things, and I was hoping he’d hit the underwear mother lode.  God knows I’ve got to try on 30 pairs to find one that doesn’t give me a wedgie of its own accord.  But he looked so sad, it gave me an idea.

The next weekend, we went shopping together.  We both picked out a shaver, some socks and some underwear and paid for each other’s purchases.  We took them home, wrapped them, and put them under the tree.  On Christmas morning, we feigned delight as we opened the packages containing the things we ourselves had picked out.  “How did you know my size?” I exclaimed as I unwrapped the undies.  “How did you know I wanted a turbo cleaning mode?” he wondered in amazement as he took out his new shaver to examine it.  Steven Spielberg would have been proud of our performances.

It just goes to prove that one of the many keys to a good marriage is, on occasion, a bit of bald-faced acting.  That’s right: lying, deceit, pretending, outright make-believe.  Dissimulation also comes in handy when your spouse gives you a gift that’s actually a surprise, but which you find ugly, unromantic, thoughtless or insulting (see the sidebar above).  Because both of us were willing to lie through our teeth and completely ignore reality, we both got what we needed, and except for a few wasted hours, the process wasn’t too agonizing.  But I thank my lucky stars that Holly Jolly Christmas doesn’t come around any more often since neither one of us could pull off that act more than once a year.

*  See A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.

** If you’re wondering why he couldn’t just look at my underwear to discover my underwear size, well, he did.  He just didn’t find anything because women’s underwear always has this annoying little tag sewn into the seam that I, like most women, just cut off.  It’s that or raise eyebrows with occasional frenzied scratching.  Sensibly, the tags on men’s underwear are sewn flat into the waistband—another way in which it’s better to be a man.

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