In Which More of My "Quirks" That Should Remain Hidden Come to Light

I HATE calling people on the phone.

I'm not talking about people I know (though I tend to shy away from that if I know it has potential to be awkward, as well). I'm talking about business, professional contacts, ordering take-out from restaurants, things like that. I've ALWAYS hated it. When I was a kid, every time my parents ordered pizza, my dad would make me call to order it. I HATED calling. I STILL HATE CALLING. I will not order food unless someone else is there to do it for me, or unless the restaurant has the foresight to use the wonderful invention known as the internet to set up an online ordering system.

Why do I bring this particular brand of crazy up in a public forum when I could so easily keep it deceptively hidden below the surface? Because right now I have a completely stupid problem that could be totally solved by me just calling a store on the phone. But instead, I'm trying to hatch overly complicated schemes to find away around just making a simple phone call. And I thought you all might appreciate a little time to laugh at me for this.

Here's the situation:

I've spent the better part of the last few months trying to come up with a really kick-butt Christmas present for B. Until this past weekend I have been entirely unsuccessful. Then I had a brilliant idea. And all that idea required was me going to a store (via train...this is important) and buying something. Today while I was in the shower, I had a different, even more brilliant idea for a gift. This one has a bit of a timeline on it, so it moved previous brilliant idea (hereby known as gift 1) to the birthday option. I assumed that I could order the second brilliant idea (hereby known as gift 2) on the internet. Well. I spent this morning checking, and it turns out I'm wrong. Or rather, I can order several very similar things on the internet, but not quite exactly what I want. So....I could settle for a mostly passable gift 2 and call it that, or I could check one more place. This place.......does not have a website. I'm also not entirely sure if they can even get me what I want. Here's where the "via train" portion of this tale comes in. I don't own a car (yet.....really old, can't-pass-emissions-in-WI Saturn, come on down!!!). B owns a car, but I do not. I also hate driving. In a different way than I hate calling stores on the phone.....in a way that means I should probably not drive EVER, especially with other cars on the road, on the MN Highway system, or when it's winter or dark. Most especially not all 4. This means that unless I physically CALL the store to find out if I can get what I need from them and if they can ship it to me (or some other scheme that I cannot go into here for fear of divulging too many key details regarding the nature of the gift), I will have to either get B to drive me (in which case he will know EXACTLY what he is getting) or I will have to convince someone else that they want to go horribly out of their way just to drive me to a store because I'm too afraid of having to have an awkward conversation with the high-school student/retiree/college dropout (sorry.....that was mean) working at the store.

See what I mean? F-ing ridiculous. Yet it's the option I'm currently entertaining the most..........