Blooming Phools

Foreword: It is that time of the year again. Gifts, and more disturbingly flowers, are at the forefront of our collective consciousness. I'm all right with them being there as long as they stay out of mine but alas, this was not to be. A friend recently asked me to get flowers for her boyfriend's birthday. This got me thinking…

A long time ago, I wrote about the subtle art of gifting and it seems people have long since forgotten about it. The lack of attention to some of the finest pieces of knowledge fills me with despair, but I digress. Back to my travails. Tasked with finding the right kind of flowers, I focused my considerable mental faculties and gave up in about 39 seconds. I had no clue! Disbelief and consternation- how is this even possible? If the revered writer of this blog professes complete inability at something, who else can you turn to, besides Oprah? Ah! There it was, cocooned in the charming expression was the answer. So, I turned on the TV and watched The Hope Channel and felt instantly better. If they had a right to live AND feel smug, so did I. Besides, I am smarter and better looking (all comments relating to this sentence will be summarily deleted. -Author).

Filled with hope, no wait- that was gas from all the peas I’d been eating, I went back to the problem at hand and decided to look up a few florists on the Internet. I found 179 different bouquets completely appropriate for the occasion, sender and receiver and each of them cost a little over the combined TARP budget. This, of course, was a roadblock of sorts, since I didn’t expect the administration to bail out said friend any time soon. Though, given that all that required was printing a few more currency notes, I think it was decidedly unkind towards her.

Spurned by the stores in the clouds, I turned to good old brick and mortar- Kroger! Thanks to the holiday season, there were lots of flowers on sale. Unfortunately, they were attached to potted plants. Now, I will have you know that I know enough about social mores to realize that build-your-own bouquets are somewhat frowned upon by the friendly Kroger staff, especially when the constituents are sourced from plants on sale. I decided to change the game by buying a potted plant instead. Surely, they were acceptable substitutes for short-lived flowers? Closer examination revealed said potted plants to be a kind of cactus and that struck me as somewhat odd, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on it (almost literally). Recalling from my business education that communication was vitally important, I immediately called up a friend, who despite being admittedly unqualified to help, expressed confidence in my choice. So I bought the nearest bouquet because:
1. It had flowers
2. It had been made within the last 6 months
3. It looked like, umm, a bouquet
4. The pots were heavy

Realize that while my methods were, I am proud to say, “structured”, this isn’t necessarily the right overall strategy. Without repeating what I’ve already said, the fact remains that a digital Playboy subscription would have gone a lot farther. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go buy some radio controlled vehicles for my grandfather.