I bought my brother some gift-wrap for Christmas. I took it to the Gift Wrap department and told them to wrap it, but in a different print so he would know when to stop unwrapping.

The present is gift-wrap, so wrapping it creates a peculiar problem: how will the recipient tell the packaging from the gift? Asking for a different pattern gives an absurdly practical answer. The joke treats an ordinary wrapping service as a puzzle about where unwrapping should stop.

Context reviewed 19 September 2026