The bane of my existence

Gift certificates.

I'm not going to concoct some boring lecture about logical fallacies and the like, but let's at least try to create some convention concering this commerical charade.

Call me old-fashioned, but where I come from a gift certificate is called a check or a fifty dollar bill; and, in the case of the bill, it is backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States government."--not Geoffrey the Giraffe or one of Sam Walton's silver-spooned grandkids.

So, let me get this straight, faceless commercial organization: I get to pay you fifty dollars for fifty dollars worth of credit to give away to someone else so they can be pigeonholed into buying that amount of overpriced merchandise from your outlet?

Gee, thanks.

And people actually take you up on this offer? It would make sense, economically speaking, were the transactions handled a bit differently. For instance, if I paid fifty dollars for sixty dollars worth of credit. That makes sense.

Like most everything in life, it's a tradeoff. I would get ten dollars worth of extra credit to give away and the commerical entreprise still gets it's money and would still maintain some semblance of a profit margin. In this way, they would be giving you a 20 percent incentive to do business with them as opposed to going elsewhere or, perhaps, just giving money--money that, realistically, could be used to buy sixty dollars worth of crap from another business.

But, in the absence of such an arrangement, what sense do gift certificates make?

What if someone has no interest in accumulating more "stuff"? What if the best gift someone could get is money to pay a bill?

"Here, I know you have that outstanding medical bill to pay off, but how do you feel about fifty dollars worth of bargain DVDs from Target?"

My sister is having a baby shower soon, and apparently no one in my family or her husband's has taken an entry level micro or macroeconomics course.

My sister flew in from North Carolina for not one, but two showers and she will, undoubtedly, be burdened by a bunch of "stuff" that she will have to find a way to taxi back to Charlotte. I don't think there will be room for a "baby bouncer" or a Disney mobile in the overhead compartment of an Airbus.

Just a hunch.

Why bother registering with Target or Kids 'R'Us? Why not register with good old Uncle Sam? Just send money. You can still have a baby shower, but instead of bringing packaged gifts bring stacks of green.

One of the keys to understanding market economics is this: Transportation costs dictate the size of a market. In other words, it makes more sense to get sugar cane from the Dominican if you live in south Florida than it does to get sugar beets from the Thumb of Michigan.

But, I digress.

Let's stop this silly little charade and start acting like saavy consumers.

Next time, instead of going to Target or Best Buy, go to Western Union.

Good Soldier

Like the lyrics from an old country song, Cavalier fans like me must “try not to think about what might have been.”

That was the feeling I was left with this past week after watching Genesee Christian’s senior and soon-to-be all-state basketball player, Scott Soldan.

The 6’4’’ and 195-pound swingman is the baseball equivalent of a five-tool player. He can shoot from range, dribble and pass like a guard, and score in amongst the trees. Last season, he was special fmention all-state after averaging better than 20 points per game.

Soldan can do it all.

It’s just too bad he wasn’t doing it in Cavalier blue.

Soldan, a resident of Flint Township since birth, opted instead to enlist at Genesee Christian and dress in Soldier blue.

He started at GCS in kindergarten and decided to see it through to the end.

“I thought about going to Carman-Ainsworth during the summer before my freshman year,” Soldan said. “My parents gave me the choice to stay at Genesee Christian or to go to Carman-Ainsworth. GCS was where I had all my friends, so I decided to stay.”

In the intervening four years, Soldan has been the big man on a small campus.

Genesee Christian is a class D high school with only about 150 students. It is a member of the MHSAA and boasts arguably the top sports program of any class D school in mid-Michigan.

Soldan’s handiwork is all over the Soldiers’ program.

It’s certainly not a big stage, but great players have a way of shining through even at shoestring schools like Genesee Christian.

“Being at Genesee Christian has been a lot of fun for me,” Soldan said. “I really like Coach Chapman, he really knows basketball.”

Dan Chapman, the first year head coach of the Soldiers basketball team, may never coach a better athlete at the class D level.

When I asked the head coach of Flint International Academy ’s basketball team, Chris Matheson, what he thought about Soldan, he beamed.

“I could go on and on about Scott,” Matheson said. “I really like the way he plays the game; he is the kind of kid you wish was on your team and he is the type of player you hope other players, particularly yours, emulate. He probably comes as close to reaching his potential as any kid in the area. He plays the game the way it was meant to be played.”

But it’s not the only game he plays, coach.

Twice an all-state soccer player, Soldan led his team all the way to the regional championship soccer game before bowing out to Oakland Christian this past November.

Last year, Soldan put the finishing touches on a great basketball season with a tremendous individual performance in the playoffs. The Soldiers won a regional title and narrowly missed making it to the state championships at the Breslin Center in East Lansing for the first time in school history.

Soldan, after scoring his 1000th career point earlier in the season, scored a combined 46 points in his team’s two regional games.

This season, Soldan got another record out of the way early. He broke the school’s all-time scoring record, one that had stood for better than a decade, during a heartbreaking loss on the road at Oakland Christian.

Genesee Christian had its share of losses last season and so far this season, but it, unlike many of its class D counterparts, doesn’t shy away from locking horns with larger schools. Soldan’s Soldiers have made a habit out of playing schools like Beecher , Saginaw Buena Vista, and Northwestern in the regular season.

“It’s better that way,” Soldan said. “It’s fun being able to play a lot of good teams like Buena Vista and Northwestern.”

Beecher is next on the docket for GCS on Tuesday night, before hooking up with Perry, one of the top class B schools in the Lansing-area.

The Soldiers were no match for last season’s class C state champions, Buena Vista , Tuesday night, but the Knights had no answer for Soldan. He scored 26 points and pulled down eight rebounds in the loss.

“As a team, I think we are going to be tough by season’s end,” Soldan said. “We just have a few kinks to work out.”

Even for a Carman-Ainsworth partisan, it’s hard to have anything but high praise for student-athlete who breaks the mold of a small-school player. He is currently being recruited by several division three schools for both basketball and soccer. Were Soldan to have his druthers, he would be playing basketball for Saginaw Valley State .

Here’s hoping he gets his chance.