There’s a commercial that’s been popping up on TV lately that’s been getting my attention. Which is saying a lot, because I don’t really watch TV. Not because I boycott (hard to do in a 900-square-foot house of avid tubeheads) but mostly because I am the type who, as soon as I sit down on the couch, spy a massive clump of dog hair in the corner, plant desperately in need of water or petrified remains of someone’s longlost lunch that requires my immediate attention. Anyway, by the time I tend to the business as well as the dozen or so other tasks I invent for myself along the way, well the show/movie/12-part mini series is over.

As a result, I tend to watch TV in fits and starts, snippets taken while moving from one room to the next. But for some reason, this commercial gets me. Not because it’s witty or moving or one of those annoying commercials that comes on 10 decibels higher than the program that preceded it. In fact, it’s pretty standard. You may recognize the cliché formula, which I’m pretty sure dates back to the Gordon Gekko “Wall Street” era. It goes something like this: (cue sappy classical holiday music) Husband blindfolds hard-working, saintly wife, who has been busy all day chauffering kids, volunteering with the blind and ironing said Husband’s business suits. Wife is led out to driveway, where a brand new (BMW, Lexus, Mercedes coupe) awaits, complete with impossibly large red bow. (Cue snow machine and angels chorus). Wife removes blindfold to find new luxury car of her dreams. Covers mouth as if to scream, but instead bursts into tears because all she has ever wanted in life is this new luxury vehicle for dropping kids off, picking up laundry, driving to tennis club. And now that she has it, her life is fulfilled. (Cut to sauve male voice-over saying something nonsensical about “Isn’t it time you paid through the nose for your love?” and jingling bells.)

 

Anyway, whatever that stupid last line is, it always cracks me and the old man up. Maybe because the idea of a gift-wrapped car went out with Molly Ringwald in the ’80s. Or maybe because it seems so in-your-face ostentatious given the current economical climate and rebellion against corporate greed and excess.

 

I mean, even the Queen of England is tightening her belt. Word has it that Buckingham Palace is up on Craig’s List to rent out for the 2012 London Games.

 

But I think what really gets the cynic in me rolling is how different TV can be from reality – is the irony of the term “reality TV” lost on everyone but me? – particularly from my own reality.

 

A shiny new $60,000 car? With a red satin bow? Who are these people? The Real Housewives of La La Land?

 

OK, so maybe there is a tinge of jealousy to what I say. See, for as fervent as I ever prayed to the god of teen-age girls (if there is such an entity) for that Cabriolet convertible on my 16th birthday, with Jake Ryan in the passenger seat, I have never had a new car, let alone been gifted one.

 

Handed down station wagons, old Mustangs that did 0 to 60 in three days, rusted out 4x4 deathtraps, yes. But never anything fresh off the production line. Oh, what I would give, just once, for that “new car smell.”

 

Not that I place blame. With a driving record like mine, you’d have to be certifiably insane to hand me the keys to anything that runs on more than gerbil power and a prayer.

 

Nevertheless, I like to think if anyone ever should, say, furnish me with four shiny new mag wheels, an in-dash GPS and heated leather cup-holders, I would laugh in their face. (Of course, I feel safe saying this because the likelihood of it ever happening is on par with that crazy man who keeps predicting the Rapture.)

 

Perhaps it is because I am a down-home mountain girl with sensible Midwestern roots. Over the years, gifts under my tree have included ski poles, kick wax, bike tires, Smartwools, climbing skins, kayak paddles, hockey sticks and assorted Gore-tex paraphernalia. Things that come in handy when motoring around under my own power, not that of a 6-cylinder turbo-cooled supercharged catalytic converter (although I would not turn down a snowmobile, purely for access reasons.)

 

And this year is no different (Santa, if you’re reading, this is where you’ll want to take notes.) See, after taking a several-year hiatus from my backcountry skiing career, there is a pretty slick avalanche air bag backpack I’ve got my eye on (all the cool mountain kids have them).

 

So, I guess, in my own, snide, smugly practical way, I am not far off from the Housewives of  La La Land. I mean, we both want expensive items that contain new airbags (sadly, any other “air bag” similarities end there) which could potentially save our lives, whether driving to the nail salon or skiing deep powder.

 

But, if I ever do get my airbag, Santa, you can keep the red bow.

 

– Missy Votel