A potential catastrophe in a vending machine. / Photo from Reddit

If you could bottle the gift-giving anxiety hovering over the populous right now, you'd have enough thrust to run the water up Niagra Falls in reverse.

I enjoy finding a gift I know the recipient will like. If I'm flipping through records at a flea market and stumble across something a friend has been searching for, it's a delight to send it to them out of the blue. The trouble is around Christmas or birthdays when a present is expected is when I tend to get the yips.

In case you're not familiar with the yips, here's the Wikipedia definition:

The yips is the colloquial term for a sudden and unexplained loss of skills among experienced athletes. Some credit the yips to a loss of fine motor skills; others consider the condition to be primarily psychological, however, it is poorly understood and has no known treatment or therapy. Originally coined by golfer Tommy Armour to describe a sudden and inexplicable loss of the ability to putt correctly, the term has later been broadened to apply to any unexplained loss of skill and has been applied to athletes in a wide variety of sports.

Thankfully I've always recovered from the gift-giving yips, but unfortunately, it's usually around Dec. 22 when I come out of the slump. Trying to negotiate overnight shipping from a bookstore in Calcutta presents a myriad of challenges. You often hear motivational speakers espousing the virtues of a new challenge, but to be honest, I'm not a fan.

When we started having kids, The Wife and I stopped buying gifts for one another and focused on the kids, but we still put a few things in each other's Christmas stockings. Every year I look forward to taking my two Tax Deductions shopping to find a few things for The Wife's Christmas stocking and maybe stumble onto something they'd like for themselves. Our youngest is still into it, but the 15-year-old is becoming a little too cool for school. 

We always check out the mom and pop stores around Lenoir County, but to make the excursion special I try to work in a little adventure. Last year we landed in the Smithfield/Selma area. Our plan was to hit the outlet stores in Smithfield at 8 a.m. to avoid the crowds, then venture into the voluminous antique stores in Selma.

We pulled into the parking lot of Carolina Premium Outlets at 7:45 a.m. I told TD No. 1 I’d make a lap so she could figure out which stores she wanted to check out. After about a minute into the lap, I noticed she didn’t seem interested in any of the stores. This continued until we drove past the third store from the end, Popcorn Haven.

“Out of all these stores, the only one that interests you is Popcorn Haven?” I asked. The only reply was an aerobic-level series of shrugs.

One item on our list for The Wife's Christmas stocking was earmuffs - but not just any earmuffs She wanted the type that hugs the back of your head instead of the top. Mind you, after weeks of asking for some morsel of a hint, she came up with these space-age earmuffs the night before our trip. 

We investigated every store that could conceivably carry earmuffs, but we struck out. I knew it was time to stop when after asking a store clerk if they carried earmuffs, he answered my question with a question:

“You mean the warm kind?” he said. 

Apparently I've been in my own little world, for I was unaware of the burgeoning ear coolant market. I'm sure the folks at Yeti are making a mint.

After only a grand total of 23-minutes at the outlets, TD No. 1 was showing signs of fatigue. She’d been really busy with a science project and a research paper that week, so I tried to pep her up by performing “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” acapella in its entirety. She seemed dutifully impressed but actually said: “we can just order the earmuffs from Amazon.”

The first emotion that ran up the back of my neck was a negative one, propelled by the realization that I’d driven 45-minutes to order some earmuffs from Amazon. Then suddenly a second, stronger emotion canceled out the first one. I realized that my beloved TD No. 1 hated shopping just as much as I did. The kid and I actually bonded over our lack of retail fortitude.

Things picked up when we headed over to Selma. There were plenty of antique stores to choose from, most notably TWM’s Antique Mall. It was cold enough to kill hogs that day, so we looked forward to roaming around TWM’s large facility with some modicum of warmth. But, alas, it was somehow as cold inside the building as it was outside.

Despite it being cold enough inside to run a polar bear up a tree, TWM’s inventory was incredible. I saw things I never knew existed - including a green marble gas stove/icebox combo and a Tom Thumb booster seat. My only purchases were three pulp novel-style books published by Mad Magazine several decades ago - but good literature never goes out of style. TD#2 has memorized the Spy vs. Spy book.

When we walked up to the cash register to pay for my books, we were informed that TWM gave away free country sausage to their customers at Christmas.

“Would you like hot or mild?” they asked.

Of course, I requested hot. Mild sausage is as un-American as Canadian bacon - which in truth, is actually ham.

A little more backstory to this trip: Neither of our kids could come up with anything they wanted for Christmas. Back in October TD#1 pointed out a watch she liked, but after trying one on we realized her arm was too skinny for the watch. TD#2 only asked for a desk lamp. Yes, a desk lamp.

I’m thankful the kids weren't asking for a truckload, but the investigatory man-hours that went into trying to slap together a Christmas for these two were starting to rival the amount it took to build a case against Al Capone. Finally, about a week before Christmas we got a break in the case. Out of the blue, TD#1 said she’d like a small chandelier for her room.

A small chandelier is admittedly an odd request, but TD No. 1 loves the show “Fixer Upper” and apparently they throw chandeliers around on that show like aspirin. The Wife’s idea was to find a small, used brass chandelier and paint it black. If we’d known she wanted this a few months ago, we’d have probably tripped over a dozen of them. But, since she waited until the week before Christmas to let us know, we’re in a bit of a pickle.

I made it my mission to find a small chandelier while we were in Selma. There were a few in the first stores we visited, but judging by their price they’d been recovered from King Tut's tomb. While walking through the last antique store on our list, I found what I believed to be a small chandelier that fit the bill.

To get to the chandelier I had to climb over a combination of furniture, washers, dryers and cats. 

Did I mention the store was covered in cats? I’m allergic to cats. 

Also, this antique store was also incredibly cold. I was a freezin’, sneezin’ chandelier-huntin’ machine. Once I reached the top of Mt. Kitty Cat, I was disheartened to find out the chandelier didn’t have a price on it.

I walked the quarter-mile back up to the register to ask about the price, but the store manager was busy trying to dislodge a cat from inside an old vending machine. They kept dropping in quarters and hitting buttons, but the cat was smart. He was hiding out in the Tab section of the machine, knowing no one ever purposely bought a Tab.

The lady running the store was too preoccupied trying to save the Tabby cat to handle a price check, which normally would have been my cue to head to the house. But, I was determined to find TD#1′s chandelier. I walked a quarter-mile back to the chandelier, took a picture and then walked a quarter mile back to the front desk.

“Oh yes that’s a nice one,” she said. “I don’t know how much it costs.”

She may have said more after that, but to protect itself my brain shut down. When I came to she was on the phone trying to find out how much the chandelier cost. For the next 15-minutes, while the cat rattled around inside the vending machine, the manager made four more phone calls to no avail while simultaneously trying to suction the Tabby cat out of the machine with a plunger. With every thrust of the plunger, you could hear the cat’s claws scrape down the side of the machine just a bit.

I made up my mind to give it five more minutes, at which time I’d offer $40. Four minutes and 59 seconds later she received a call.

“I can sell it for $40,” she said.

I called The Wife and told her our chandelier problems were over.

“How big is it?” The Wife asked.

“I don’t have a tape measure app on my phone,” I said.

“Send me a picture,” she said.

A few seconds later The Wife called back. Sensing something wasn’t right I handed the phone to TD No. 1.

“She said it was too big,” TD No. 1 said.

“You’re getting a bag of switches for Christmas,” I said. 

As we walked out of the store a young boy put money in the vending machine and made a selection. When no drink materialized he kicked the machine, causing the Tabby cat to bolt out of the chute like an orange missile onto the boy.

The cat danced on the kid’s head for a solid minute before the store manager neutralized the situation with a fire extinguisher. On the bright side, the kid will probably never drink soda again.

Gift certificates are the way to go, folks. Anyone who tells you otherwise is obviously part of some enemy sleeper cell who should be investigated.

Jon Dawson's humor columns are published weekly by Neuse News. Contact Jon at jon@neusenews.com and www.jondawson.com.