While bucking the hordes of thoroughly confused shoppers at the Bangor Mall earlier this week, I overhead a conversation in the men’s department at Filene’s that pretty much summed up, I think, how things go when husbands and wives make the mistake of venturing forth together on Christmas shopping expeditions. (Only the names have been changed, to protect the guilty.)

He: “How about this shirt for Herb?”

She: “I don’t think so. Ethel doesn’t care for bright colors.”

He: “But if it’s for Herb, Ethel wouldn’t be wearing it, would she?”

Although I didn’t stick around to see how things turned out, I’m pretty sure that ol’ Herb didn’t wind up with that particular shirt under his Christmas tree this morning. Not that I’d mind finding it under mine, I mused as I pressed bravely onward with the rest of the befuddled lemmings in search of The Perfect Gift. Fat chance, though, of me ever getting such a spiffy shirt as that from the crowd I run with.

Not that it much matters. Even if the presents under my tree are largely of the lump-of-coal genre, I am well ahead of the game, having been “gifted” nearly every week of the year by readers reacting to the Saturday morning rant which you are negotiating at this very moment. A sampling:

A January column about politicians and their empty promises, written after President Bush’s State of the Union speech, earned this e-mail response from a reader, home town unknown: “Of course, to prove your point you could have used the actual reality gap in our current president’s rhetoric and actions. But, instead, predictably, you chose John Kerry to ‘prove’ that politicians don’t live up to promises. You should send the column to Fox News. Maybe they’ll send you a brownie…”

A column mentioning Finley Peter Dunne (Mr. Dooley), and his insufferable indulgence in his version of Irish speech, brought e-mail thank-you notes from several Dunne fans. John Teare of Rockport asked that I “please slip in more of his [Mr. Dooley’s] ageless wisdom whenever you think the desk will let it through. But please spare us your denigration of ‘that aggravating hick dialect.’ As a devout Mainer, you probably sound a bit odd now and then yourself. ‘Old Dawg??’ What language is that?”

After a Bush news conference in April, a column suggested that how one rates a president’s performance at such events depends largely upon one’s politics. That provoked one reader to come unhinged before my very eyes, an early Christmas present indeed for any self-respecting agitator. Because I didn’t ask his permission to quote the man, I won’t blow his cover. But no Scrooge am I, so share I must.

Bush’s performance was “absolutely awful,” my pen pal declared, insisting that his assessment was based on reason rather than politics. “It was his not answering question after question, nonstop rambling, look of extreme nervousness, his body language and facial expressions, lack of poise, lack of being articulate, lack of grace and humor, inability to intelligently compose answers, his illogic, his arrogance, his condescension, his childishness, his total inability to accept accountability for anything, his willingness to blame others, etc., etc., etc….”

Other than that, though, I presume that the reader must have been rather taken with our president, else he would not have sat through the entire gig. All things considered, I’d suppose he was absolutely thrilled with the results of the Nov. 2 election, as well.

Following a column about the out-of-control proliferation of the anonymous news source in day-to-day reporting, Phil Locke of Bangor wrote to say that, as a tutor for two young foreigners learning English as a second language, he frequently has them read aloud to him from the Bangor Daily News.

“Your Saturday column was quite a challenge for them,” he reported, listing some 30 adjectives and nouns he needed to help his pupils with, “plus one phrase, ‘go to hell with the joke,’ which I had never heard – the meaning of which I had to infer from the context. In contrast, they needed practically no help to read a standard AP story in the same edition. Congratulations for continuing to write for sophisticated adults…”

Imagine that. Six months ago I didn’t know what a writer for sophisticated adults was. Now I are one, catering to a clientele experienced in the ways of the world – refined, urbane, clever and cultivated. My pappy always warned me that no good would come of my hell-bent desire to become an ink-stained wretch. But did I heed his advice? Noooooo.

Merry Christmas, all. Keep those cards and letters coming.

Columnist Kent Ward’s e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net