One of my favorite TV shows is The Big Bang Theory. Roommates Leonard Hofstadter and Sheldon Cooper are brilliant physicists, who understand everything about how the world works, but don’t understand the first thing about social interaction.
One Christmas their neighbor in the apartment across the hall, Penny, lets on that she has bought Sheldon a Christmas present and it bothers him completely because unless he orders his world perfectly he can’t cope. According to him, if someone buys you a present, you have to buy a present back. But not any old present; no, it has to be a comparably priced present. Not too much because that would be gross. Not too little because that would show lack of caring.
Although it’s a very funny scene, I've lived in that awkwardness of here comes Christmas again with the old familiar anxiety of '”did I get the appropriate gift!?” So Sheldon Cooper has a solution, he goes to a department store with friends and purchases a whole range of gift baskets from modest priced ones to very expensive ones. His plan is to receive Penny’s present first, open it and evaluate it, and then pretend he has to step into his room (feigning gastric discomfort). When her returns, he’ll have with him the appropriately priced gift basket and later return all the unused gift baskets to the mall.
Continue Reading...
One Christmas their neighbor in the apartment across the hall, Penny, lets on that she has bought Sheldon a Christmas present and it bothers him completely because unless he orders his world perfectly he can’t cope. According to him, if someone buys you a present, you have to buy a present back. But not any old present; no, it has to be a comparably priced present. Not too much because that would be gross. Not too little because that would show lack of caring.
Although it’s a very funny scene, I've lived in that awkwardness of here comes Christmas again with the old familiar anxiety of '”did I get the appropriate gift!?” So Sheldon Cooper has a solution, he goes to a department store with friends and purchases a whole range of gift baskets from modest priced ones to very expensive ones. His plan is to receive Penny’s present first, open it and evaluate it, and then pretend he has to step into his room (feigning gastric discomfort). When her returns, he’ll have with him the appropriately priced gift basket and later return all the unused gift baskets to the mall.