(A version of this story first appeared in Boulevard magazine.)
I'm the type of shopper who when she needs something ponders the one place in which the odds are greatest she'll find it, plots the most energy-efficient route to that store, asks the first person she finds where this item might be found, looks perhaps for 30 seconds at the selection, hopes to find a sale sticker, makes a choice, and with the purchase trailing behind in her haste to get to the check out, pays for it, all the while feeling slightly faint.
So, being this type person, you can understand that when my friend, Elena, who is something of a perfectionist and who very well comprehends my feelings about shopping, called me and begged me to go with her to help pick out a present for her mother's 70th birthday, I felt the dark clouds of a blizzard or typhoon or tornado, some apocalyptic, unavoidable natural disaster, about to strike.
(Please go to Elena's Gift contd)
