I’ve got an interesting predicament on my hands, and by “interesting,” I actually mean “lazy”…

You see, I’ve got a couple of packages that have been sitting on my counter for several weeks now – I think they’re some goofy kind of screw hooks or something that I thought I needed for a project that I was working on, but apparently I must’ve gotten by without them because they’ve never actually been opened. I need to just return them to Wal-Mart and be done with them, but therein lies my predicament of the hour – I, as a grown, certified male adult, have the memory of your average kumquat. No offense any kumquats that might happen to be reading this column, of course.

Now I know that I’m not the only guy who has this sort of problem because I see their own piles of miscellaneous junk that needs to be returned on their counters whenever I come over to do manly things (read: play video games and tell dirty jokes). But don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that this particular issue is lumped in with the standard male behavior of forgetting all sorts of other important pieces of information (i.e. birthdays, anniversaries, children’s names) – I think this is a special case because consider this: you never really see anything of value just lying around, waiting to be returned, now do you?

If it’s a defective DVD player, an unwanted movie, or even just some random piece of sports equipment for an activity that you’ve never even played before that was bought for you by a relative who had received certain insight from your significant other that maybe you’d spend more time outside if you had, oh say, a tennis racket or something, those all manage to skirt their way to the top of the ‘ole memory list because hey, they’ve got a little value to them that we should be able to trade in for something that we actually do want! It’s been months since Christmas and I still haven’t seen the tennis court, but man, is that new King Kong game for the X-Box 360 sweet…

I’m probably going to paint myself into a proverbial corner, but I might even be so bold as to say that it’s a woman thing because in all of my years of knowing the female gender and all that they are worth, I can’t think of a single instance of where one of my lady friends ever “had something to return” because within a matter of seconds after realizing that it’s not the right shade / style / denomination, they were already waiting in line at that desk for their $1.29 back so that they could get the pink pens instead of the black ones.

It sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I assure you that I just couldn’t make this kind of stuff up – I once waited for a girlfriend for twenty minutes because she had grabbed a pack of grape gum and she was actually interested in more of a strawberry-banana concoction … that’s right, twenty minutes for a pack of gum. I didn’t want to brag, but I could’ve bought her one of every flavor in the display – that’s just how I roll – but ultimately we all know that it wouldn’t have mattered anyways. It was the principle of the thing, or something like that – I really stopped paying attention after about the twelve-minute mark…

The morale of my story is, well, I’m really not sure, but it sure killed a nice chunk of time that I could’ve otherwise wasted standing in line at the customer service desk, didn’t it? As far as when my screw hooks will actually get returned, well, your guess is as good as mine, but if anybody’s going to the store, would you mind picking me up a pack of gum? I’m in the mood for strawberry…

Wait – no, make that grape.