Gwinnett Daily Post

Making a Christmas wish list gets more difficult each year. I have all the "things" I could possibly want. I have jewelry and clothes I've never worn and have even unloaded some of them at St. Vincent De Paul. It's not that I don't want for anything, but so many of the things I wish for fall into that "priceless" category we see on the MasterCard commercials.

Despite all the clothes that hang in my closet, the one thing I still lack is a "YES! This is me!" little black dress. The only black dresses I'm able to find in the stores have ripply tickle-the-knee hemlines and are trimmed with red rhinestones, white piping or pink metallic Rick Rack. (No, I didn't make that up.) I wish there were a store that sold nothing but plain black dresses that I could try on with my own accessories and view in broad daylight. Having bombed out with a few catalog purchases that either weren't cut right or were the wrong shade of black - yes, that's possible - I just want to see what I'm buying.

I wish the genius who invented those wonderful little Lego connectors for garden hoses would apply his skills to dryer hoses. I wish that here and now in the third millennium, I could take one small step beyond duct tape, grab my dryer hose and snap that unwieldy little sucker to the wall.

Maybe it's because my dad was a butcher and I grew up with custom cuts, but I sure do wish the meat handlers at the grocery store would respect my pro-choice stance and allow me the right to choose how many chicken breasts I want. Steaks and pork chops come in packs of one or two, so I can mix and match ad infinitum. But chicken breasts are only sold in packs of three. What if I want four? Or five? Do the math!

And then, I wish the people who write directions on bottles would try to read them before marketing them. It's not just the one-millimeter print. My reading glasses take care of that. But green ink on a transparent bottle of blue conditioner? Or a bottle of clear cat shampoo with the label showing through backward from the front?

And a really big wish is that someday I get a phone call from the cable company that goes like this:

"Mrs. Larson, we've reviewed your records and we see that we are billing you $47.73 per month for 80 channels and you only watch three of them. For Christmas, we're running a special and would like to offer you a reduced monthly rate of $10, so you can choose not to pay for what you don't use. Would you like me to sign you up?"

Don't I wish!

Susan Larson is a Lilburn resident. E-mail her at susanlarson4@yahoo.com.