The "Getting" Season
By Dario Bollacasa

When you have a transaction there are at least two participants. In the case of “getting”, there is at least one “getter” and one “giver”. For the transaction to be a win-win, it helps if the “getter” and the “giver” are on the same page. Sometimes, a less than satisfactory transaction makes for amusing anecdotes; sometimes the consequences of a failed transaction are dire. I will stick to what I consider to be amusing and instructive personal stories.

The tales go back to my childhood after WWII. My family lived in Italy and we had relatives in the US. We have all heard of C.A.R.E. packages, we had more personal attention: we received personal packages from our relatives. Their arrival was preceded by a letter, which traveled by airmail, and a long wait for the package, which traveled by slow cargo ship.

There was great anticipation for the arrival of the packages, wild imaginings about the contents and we all stood around the kitchen table as my father carefully cut through tape, hoping that the custom officials did not take too much of the content. My father always hoped for cigarettes, but none ever made it to our house.

We received goods that we had not seen in years: chocolate bars, cookies, candy and sugar. And also some strange things like chewing gum and peanut butter. There were also some memorable items, which were turned into stories repeated over the years.

One of the stories had to do with coffee, an item treasured by my parents. It came in bean form, from the A&P, in a red bag. My parents carefully ground some beans and brewed them. They looked in disbelief at the color of the brew: a pale brown; tasted it: weaker than tea, and wondered how anybody would call this “beverage” coffee. Of course, it was readily ascertained that the beans were not roasted very deeply. Additional roasting made an improvement, but the beans never delivered a decent cup of espresso.

Another time we received a box very colorfully printed, with lots of writing in English. Inside the box there was a bag made with wax paper and inside the bag a mixture that contained raisins and some crunchy bits apparently made from some grain. We had no idea of what to do with this foodstuff and how to eat it. The raisins were consumed quickly, but the other stuff hung around for a while and was eventually fed to some chickens.

At some point I decided to made a request for something that I wanted really badly, something whose English name I knew: a football. I knew that if called it by the Italian name it would make no sense, but I could I go wrong if I used the English name, the name used in the U.K.

Eventually the package arrived, and sure enough there was a football in it. But it had a shape that made no sense to me: it was pointy and did not bounce well at all. Never mind, we made “lemonade” out of this “lemon”. My friends and I kicked this football all over the town and learned some foot skills that could not be learned with a round ball. The football was finally retired a couple of years later, all beat up, scuffed and torn, while it provided countless ours of fun and exercise.

So, as you prepare to go out and do your duty as a “giver”, try to establish what your “getter” may want. You may do yourself, the “getter” and the person behind the “Returns” counter a big favor.