COLUMN: Your manual to birthday shopping for a wife

Maybe it’s a married man’s biggest challenge; appropriately acknowledging his wife’s birthday.

I keep thinking a married man who does that with success is better at that than a reputable brain surgeon. One slight, wrong move and it’s all over. At least the married man has another chance to redeem himself the next year.

Shopping for clothes for a birthday gift, heck, for any reason for a woman, is one of those areas where it can be tough to be confident in what you are doing. Pick the wrong color and you will hear the complaints she has nothing else to wear with it. Pick the wrong style and you may put your wife in a different decade; one she doesn’t want to be in. Pick the wrong size and you will have better surroundings in a Turkish prison.

No matter what size, if it’s wrong, you are wrong. Bought something too big? Bought something too small? You are between a rock and a hard place and your best bet is to start eating the rock.

Here is some great advice for buying clothes for women; have a daughter or three. What makes it even better is when the mom and daughter(s) can wear the same clothes and shoes and have the same interests. Use the daughter’s assistance when clothes shopping. The wife’s birthday may cost exponentially more since the daughter can wear the same clothes for mom, but remember, it’s an investment, not an expense.

Flowers can be a good thing as a birthday gift. I think the only factor is the time of year for your wife’s birthday. If the birthday is during the winter, or when you traditionally don’t grow flowers, it might be a good pick-me-up to break the winter blahs. Be careful about buying flowers or plants for the birthday if it is spring or summer. If your wife is already a gardener, you may be encroaching the same area as the clothes. Like clothes, plants can be the wrong color or size or not fit what else is in the garden or landscape. A wife’s garden is like her clothes closet, but outside.

Gift cards are an all-or-nothing strategy. You may get the criticism of not having any thought since, really, gift cards don’t take much thought at all. (Gift cards have defeated the age old saying, ‘it’s the though that counts.’) But you think you have succeeded since you can’t think anything will go wrong with a gift card since she will be full control of what she wants.

She really wants a husband who knows what she wants. A gift card is not it.

Stay away from home appliances. Even though you may want a new refrigerator to keep your new favorite microw-brew, let her decide when it’s time for a new refrigerator. Enough said.

Taking them out to dinner also has its stresses. If a husband and wife each like the same place, that’s a win. But realize there are guys who like guy-food places. Guys want to be seated at tables with knives that could cut down a tree in the Redwoods. Women can like those places where they can feel their pinky finger curl in when picking up the tea cup the moment the car is parked. Remember, the man’s pinky is to help hold the knife.

And there are women-food places. Every time I’ve been in a Panrea Bread, I’ve been the only man in the place, including employees. After the 38th visit to a Panera Bread, I was convinced the place is a union meeting hall for women. I don’t know why. Are soups-and-salads more on the feminine side? I have had good stuff at those places, but I lose my focus on eating once I realize I’m, again, the only man in the place.

Happy shopping.