EMMA PHILBROOK: STUDENT LIFE

I t's almost Christmas, and if any of you are anything like me you'll still be trying to get some last-minute shopping in - in order, of course, to ensure that all of your loved ones get the perfect gift.

When it doesn't quite work out like that, however, the results can be faintly amusing. So here's my gift to all of you: A list of the worst gift-giving predicaments I've ever been in. (But I put the entire list in the second person, just to lessen the personal shame I feel.)

At the end of a long day of shopping, you find the perfect present for your little brother. You immediately buy it and have it gift-wrapped. As soon as you get home, your mother pulls you aside and whispers that she picked up the present you bought for him earlier in the day - you know, the one that was on backorder? You did not intend to buy him two presents, but you somehow managed to forget about the first one. You need the money you spent on his second present to buy your grandfather something. And you live too far out of town to return either gift. And, personally, you're pretty sure Brother Dearest is incredibly lucky to get anything besides coal or underwear, much less two things.

You purchase a charming wooden ornament at a bazaar. It is covered with Asian writing and painted with the figure of a man in Asian dress. You are in the fourth grade and know nothing about Asia. You have one aunt who is from China and another who collects Japanese memorabilia. They are the only ones in your family who could tell for sure whether the writing is Chinese or Japanese, and you naturally can't ask either of them. Which one do you give it to?

As you're driving away from the Tri-Cities after picking up your cousin from the airport, your brother asks your cousin for advice on a good present for a teenage girl. She's not sure. You butt in that you're a teenage girl and that you have an excellent suggestion: J.C. Penney sells perfume samplers. These contain ten or so little vials of nice perfume, so the recipient can try them all out and pick a favorite. And there's a voucher enclosed that's good for a full-sized bottle of whatever that favorite may be. He immediately calls you a "genius," which he never does, and is getting very excited about the gift when you remind him that Mom is driving this car away from the nearest J.C. Penney at 60 miles an hour. He glares at nobody in particular, then shouts, "Mother! You fool!" in his best movie villain voice.

You decide that it would be fun to use your soap-making kit to craft your mother a couple of shell-shaped soap bars infused with lotion and scented salts. All of the soap colors in your kit are tacky neon shades, and you only have a bit of white. Then you remember reading something about putting Easter Peeps in the microwave and watching them melt, and that there was a footnote on the page about Ivory soap doing an "interesting mutational thing" in the microwave. You automatically assume that since the rest of the page concerns melting, the "interesting mutational thing" must mean melting as well. You melt it to put it in the mold. Then you notice that it isn't melting. It's growing.