1-800 Flowers

Full review
Gentlemen, please take your seats. Turn off the game, quit thinking about work, put down your beer, and try to focus for the two-three minutes it will take you to read this. This stuff isn't difficult, it's just completely foreign and therefore initially intimidating. However, pay attention and I promise you, you will improve the quality of your life (ie, sex) and that of your significant other(s) (ie, happiness, thoughtfulness, sentimentality, etc, etc).

First fact: chicks dig flowers. They just do. I agree, it makes no sense, but there you have it. You cannot go wrong having flowers delivered to a woman. Such a thing may not completely exonerate you after a particularly egregious mistake (coming home a day or two late, drunk, with an unidentified but clearly worn pair of red thong panties in your pocket, for instance), but it can never hurt. It pays to remember this.

Second fact: flowers are easy. Sure, you can go to an actual bricks and mortar florist shop and pick through stuff there, but the likely outcome is you're going to mumble some inarticulate request, thumb through a catalog on the counter, find the price point you are willing to endure, and blindly point at something. Not the worst strategy in the world, but with the advent of all manner of online vendors, why not take it one step further and do it all from the comfort of your La-Z-boy recliner? You browse the catalog in exactly the same way, serve up your credit card info when requested, some minimum wage schmuck delivers your oh-so-thoughtful present to the lucky recipient, and you reap all the glory - you don't even have to show up, dude. How awesome is that?

Third fact: flowers are crazy expensive, or so it seems at first blush. A halfway decent arrangement is going to run you fifty bucks, minimum, and can easily hit three figures if you want to really tart things up. Thus, it's not economically viable to send a couple of dozen roses every time you screw up - you'll bore the poor woman to tears and go broke in the process. Besides, such an approach devalues the "wow" factor of an occasional delivery. Judiciously deployed, the dollars spent on floral arrangements can yield impressive results in terms of goodwill accrued. Get over the cost and consider it a shrewd investment in interpersonal harmony.

You will want to familiarize yourself with one or more reputable online floral vendors. 1-800-FLOWERS.com is certainly adequate, and there are several others with nationwide or even international delivery capabilities. I was seriously impressed at how easy it was to deliver a fruit basket to a colleague's wife in Shanghai, China - no more difficult than sending a bouquet to my wife, and timely delivery, too.

Which brings us to the topic of occasion. When should you send flowers? As noted above, flowers can be a powerful tonic after domestic turmoil - nothing this side of the French army says "I give up" quite as effectively as a bouquet. Similarly, Valentine's Day, anniversary, and birthday can all be easily managed with floral solutions. Most powerful of all, of course, is the "just because" delivery. You can gain whopping extra credit with an unexpected, non-occasion-based delivery of a floral arrangement. You don't want to do this too often, but if you're like me, it's a rare and refreshing occasion to be on the credit side of the domestic ledger, if only briefly.

As you gain confidence and familiarity with this whole floral thing, you may want to further distinguish yourself by actually learning the names of two or three varieties of flowers. Instead of the rote (and expensive) long-stemmed roses thing every time, why not buy yourself some extra-special karma by tailoring the arrangement to fit the occasion? This is an advanced technique and by no means necessary, but it's incredibly effective when you can say to your beloved "I chose alstroemeria because they are so hardy and long-lasting - just like our love" or "I got you irises because they remind me of the incredible blue of your eyes" or "I ordered paperwhites so that you smell early spring even while the snow is still on the ground". Again, I'm telling you, women eat this stuff up.

Note that there's nothing in all of this that requires you to a) enjoy flowers; b) abandon even the smallest scintilla of masculinity; or c) expend more than the bare minimum of effort. This is a win-win-win proposition, boys. Flowers are your friends and you owe it to yourselves to get familiar.

1-800-FLOWERS.com - put it on your "Favorites" list right next to the TV Guide and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit links.