Sunday, December 7, 2014

No Sweat

Right after Thanksgiving each year our church starts their 'Giving Trees' outreach program.  Several artificial trees are set out in the vestibule and hung with envelopes, each envelope representing one person's gift requests. Hubby Tony and I both select an envelope, buy the items on the list, then return the wrapped gifts for delivery. 

This year I chose a teenage girl, and Tony picked a 30-something man.   It wasn't until I got home and looked at the envelopes closely that I realized that the man said he wanted size 36 pants.  No length was given.

I think it's hard enough to guess at the tastes of someone you don't know without the extra wrinkle of having to guess their size, too.  I asked several people what they thought the average men's inseam was (the consensus was 32 or 33), then pondered their answers for a few days before I headed out.  At the first store I found the pair of jeans the girl wanted, and a nice pair of men's dress pants on the clearance rack. 

Because I didn't spend as much on the gentleman as I'd planned, I decided to buy him a second pair--basic sweat pants with elastic bottoms, which would avoid the length issue entirely.  However, those basic sweat pants ended up being surprisingly hard to find.  The first four stores I went to had upscale fleece or fancy polyester pants with open bottoms.  I finally broke down and went to Walmart, the bastion of basic. 

Even at Walmart it was difficult  I had to walk around the men's department a couple of times to find what I was looking for.  The first display I saw only had pants that were way too large, and the second had the right size, but only in a weird medium blue color.  (I grabbed them, just in case.)  On the third pass through I saw the wall of sweat shirts and pants and happily exchanged to strange-colored pants for a more traditional dark gray and called it done.

10 comments:

  1. Love that your church does that! Doing such (Operation Christmas Child, Angel Tree, church giving trees) are one of my favorite Christmas things.

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    1. It feels good to do things for others (once you figure out what they need!).

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  2. I love you stories of what a person can do with the day to themselves. They do organize and fill up quickly!

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  3. A worthy cause! Of course you shop for Tony!

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  4. That is so sweet of you to make this a tradition! I did something similar with a friend once. We both bought gifts and turned them in together so that it would be a little bit cheaper for each of us.

    I appreciate that you made an extra effort trying to find some pants/sweatpants for the guy. I know he will too!

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    1. I like your idea of doing good deeds with a friend. I bet that was fun.

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  5. A group of ladies from my previous church put together Thanksgiving dinners for families at a school where I am involved. They did the heavy lifting, I did the delivery. Now, they are planning to do a Christmas project. These are elderly ladies, proving that one is never too old to be generous.

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    1. Sounds like a great team. Will you be involved this time also?

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