No Deposit, No Return Returning gifts is not something we do in my family. We feel that gifts should not be rejected by the recipient except under extreme circumstances. In short, the gift you receive is yours to enjoy, come hell or high water. So as you contemplate returning your Billy the Singing Bass, your Jim Nabors Sing-Along Christmas CD or your Dale Earnhart racing clock, consider this: Did Mary send the Wise Men packing when they broke out the myrrh? Even if exchange dispensation is granted in my family it is only after skeins of effusive whining have been strewn upon the presenter. Like if your Auntie Grezelda got your sister size 8 pedal pushers and Sis has left off entertaining all earthly notions of squeezing into a 12 anytime before the rapture; then and only then might one apply for recourse to exchange the item for one more based in reality, dimensionally speaking. Even this only after examining the prospect of using the size 8’s as an attractive wall hanging or informative wind sock. The rule applies to Christmas, birthdays, weddings, anniversaries and all other occasions featuring ribbons and tissue paper. We Richards’ come to our traditions honestly. At the age of nine I marched down to Naha’s Department Store and rattled my entire $1.37 across the counter top in front of a startled, matronly, notions clerk. I dazzled her with my cash first because I didn’t want her to think she was wasting her time on some penniless rube. After examining an impressive array of her finer pieces (held secure to their placard with a twist of wire) I selected a pair of earrings that I opined would make my mother the belle of any ball she chose to attend. They were dice. Bright red dice. Large, bright red dice. The “points” on each surface were marked with authentic shimmering rhinestones. One could easily imagine freeing those dice, with a pair of needle nose pliers, from their cumbersome gold clasps and getting up a swell game. They were everything a nine-year-old boy could have hoped for in an earring. Of course way back then I was ignorant in the ways of females and was not yet able to read their innermost thoughts as handily as I do now. What’s that buzzing in my ears? Now, where was I? Ah yes. I remember being annoyed with the clerk who kept asking if I was sure dice were an appropriate present for my mother. Stupid woman. As if my mother didn’t deserve the very best stuff on the rack! Harrumph! After I had presented them to Mom during a ceremony at the dinner table that night, I realized that as far as loving sons went, I had once again pretty much outdone myself. She must have sat for hours, holding those dice in the palm of her hand repeating over and over, “Oh, Jimmy, dice earrings. I can’t believe it.” She was so moved that she actually dabbed at the corner of her eyes a few times with a hanky. Each evening thereafter, whenever she prepared to go out, I lingered at her makeup table until she dutifully affixed them to each ear. She would smile and thank me again and jiggle her head for me so I could see the rhinestones twinkle. Oddly enough she always insisted on wrapping spare earrings from her jewelry box in tissue and tucking them into the same little compartment in her purse where she kept her Beeman’s gum. When I asked why, she explained they were in case one of her friends showed up having forgotten to wear any. Once she returned home wearing her “spare” pair instead of my dice in which she had left the house. I was beyond consolation until she explained that when she arrived at church there were several women wearing pathetic little earrings without even a single rhinestone on them. She said those good Christian women shouldn’t be made to feel bad just because their sons were witless little goons who hadn’t thought to bejewel their mothers as lavishly as I had. It gave me a perverse sense of self-satisfaction to think that I could drive grown women to episodic fits of depression when confronted by evidence of my largess. I was reminded of that 20 years later when my ex unwrapped her customized bowling ball. How did the woman ever expect to get over her raging aversion to bowling unless she owned her own ball? When she inquired about the cost I explained that we didn’t have to go out for dinner every Saturday night, did we? Come to think of it, that was the last time I heard that buzzing noise.