The Gift That Keeps On Giving Should Be Manly in Its Fashion

With this column, humorist Alice Kahn begins twice-weekly appearances in View. A former high school English teacher and nurse, Kahn has been described as the pulse-taker of the baby-boom generation. She has been writing humor columns in the Bay Area since 1983, and her most recent book is “My Life as a Gal.� The column will appear on Wednesdays and Sundays.

There are two kinds of people you cannot buy presents for. One is men, the other is husbands. If your husband is a man, the situation is utterly impossible.

Even if you buy something seemingly innocuous like a shirt, you come up against men and their weird tailoring cults. Things that mean nothing to a normal person carry all sorts of significance for men.

There’s a secret code in things like shirt collars--not unlike the meanings youth gangs attach to tattoos. For instance, I once bought my husband a shirt that said nothing special to me, but to him the collar was like a neon sign saying, “Gay and Cruising.�

The life cycle of the average man can be divided into three phases: the button-down years (BD), the anti-button-down years (AD), and the AD/BD era. Failure to read the signs can result in domestic sartorial violence.

Selecting other simple items, like ties, is also out. Giving a tie is the equivalent of collaborating with the oppressor.

Make no mistake--the issue is manliness. Anything chosen by a woman is potentially sissy.

Finally, one is left with thoughts like: Well, then I’m going to give him something I want him to have. That’s when I decided on the perfect gift--a lawn mower.

Before buying my husband the power mower, I attempted to gain the complicity of his best friend. The friend refused to desert the fraternity. Even in an era of power ties and power lunches, a power mower could be viewed as unmanly, the brother said. Real men do things the hard way.

So I made up my mind. I was going to buy him a weed whip. No questions asked.

I went to the famous Pastime Hardware, a store where they sell nails and drills and chain saws. There were men in the store in cowboy hats looking at manure spreaders. There’s a gun shop across the street. How could I go wrong?

The clerk--himself a man--showed me the deluxe weed whip, then volunteered, “But you know you’re paying a lot for the name. You could probably find a cheaper one at a discount place.�

I drove across town to Payless, where I was delighted to find they had weed whips on sale. I made it as far as the checkout line when a clerk--undeniably male--stopped me. “Let me see that,� he said, snatching the weed whip from the jaws of victory.

He fiddled with the starter switch. “I don’t like this at all. I wouldn’t buy it,� he said generously. All I wanted was an end to present shopping.

The honest clerk continued. “Listen, there’s a good hardware store called Pastime where you could probably find a Black & Decker.�

Are these guys in cahoots?

I ended up buying my husband a Samsonite garment bag. He opened it and said, “Now why do I need this?� and I brought it back the next day.

But there was one other little present he loved. It was a piece of wooden kitsch that I found at a variety store’s going-out-of-business sale. I’m not sure if he loved the gift that much or whether he just liked the 50-cent price tag that I left on to please him.

It was a wall plaque called Wifey’s Mood Barometer. It included a wheel with a dial that could be set to sweet (drawing of sugar), sour (lemon), stubborn (mule), bossy (rolling pin), silly (goose), etc.

I keep setting it to sweet, but someone keeps turning the needle to dangerous (knives).

It’s a problem to set because there are only eight choices, and a woman’s day takes her through many subtle gradations. There are days when I can go from laid back (willow leaf) to PMS (weed whip) in 30 seconds.

The hubbyometer, however, requires only one setting: Impossible.