Stickers Bring Down The Divorce Rate Over Xmas (Allegedly)

The festive season is winding itself down and, despite my recent Grinch-like outlook, it was actually good fun. The improved mood was aided in no small part by the fact that my wife managed to do 90% of the shopping online, and the remaining 10% without any involvement from me whatsoever. A good result all round really – no effort on my part, and no need to have the annual falling out over my apparent grumpiness while being dragged up and down the high street for the umpteenth time (no idea what she’s talking about). I think we should stick to this approach from now on.

In the past I have tried to reason that it’s been proven that males are genetically not cut out for Xmas shopping as we are the logical and focused members of the species. We have a list, we find the item in a shop, and we buy it. In the words of the TV Meerkat “simples”. We just don’t feel the need to leave that item, look for its long lost twin in at least five other stores, before returning an hour later, exasperated, to (hopefully) find it still there and then buy it. Apparently this (usually futile) “search for a better deal” is similarly encoded into the female genome, as is the tendency to slap their male counterparts around the back of the head when our standard reflex of rolling our eyes and letting out long suffering sighs occurs once too often – but I digress…..
So, the week before Xmas the parcels started arriving at home and the challenge was to get them in through the door and stashed away without the kids noticing. My wife, unusually logical for once, came up with a stickering scheme to keep the logistics under control, and I do have to admit it was pretty neat. We had a list of which items were ordered from where, and who they were for. We then had a set of pre-printed stickers with the names of the kids on, so when a parcel arrived all we had to do was check the contents against the list, apply the appropriate sticker, and stash the loot away ready for the pre Xmas wrapping session. All very quick and efficient, and once again minimal thought required on my part.
So the moral of the story is to leave it all to the wife – she is in fact far better at this stuff than I ever will be. The challenge is how to keep this going without ever having to utter the words “You’re right darling”.