Thanks, But No Thanks

Gift-giving can be fraught with peril, from finding just the right gift for someone to graciously accepting weird or unwanted gifts. Kathryn’s post about Christmas being thrust upon us made me think about the whole gift-giving process. Frankly, I’m a little sick of it. When I was younger, I really enjoyed it. I was one of those annoying people who started shopping in September and had it all done by Thanksgiving. But I’ve been doing this for a long time now, and I am fresh out of ideas. I have actually suggested a couple of times that within the family, we just make donations in each other’s name to charity. I am the only one who thinks this is a good idea. Apparently, I am some sort of Communist who doesn’t want to support our great American economy by giving and receiving a lot of useless crap. Here are a few examples of my weirder experiences with the gifting process.

This reminds you of me?

Years ago, I was exchanging gifts with a friend that I had hooked up with a couple of times. I’m not sure why we were exchanging gifts, since the situation didn’t really call for it, but somehow it happened. I gave him a book I knew he wanted. He gave me a Lenox china serving fork and spoon. I figured it was a re-gift or something he found at his parents’ house, but he said that he saw it in a store and “I thought of you.” It was very pretty, but completely unsuited to my lifestyle as I was then living alone in an apartment with a miniscule kitchen, my freezer and fridge rarely held anything more than vodka, champagne, and a couple of lemons and limes, and the only entertaining I did involved lots of alcohol. I am still trying to figure this one out.

No, really you shouldn’t have

A long time ago I lived with someone I call Mr. Ex. His mother really wanted to give him a crockpot when we moved into together. She was obsessed with crockpots. Is there a Society for the Promotion of Crockpots? If so, she’s the president. After he refused the offer, she cornered me and spent an hour extolling the joys of cooking with a crockpot. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with crockpots, but they are designed for people who know at 7 a.m. what they will be eating for dinner at 7 p.m. I am not one of those people. She tried to convince me that I needed a crockpot, and I politely declined. Or at least I thought I had. A few days later she called me up to let me know that she had bought me a crockpot for my birthday, and although she was sorry to “spoil the surprise,” she wanted to let me know so I wouldn’t purchase a second one for myself. The funny thing was, it was April and my birthday was in August. Early gifts are always nice, but this was sort of ridiculous. I never used the damn thing. It disappeared two moves ago.

The lousy gift Hall of Fame

Some of you may have heard stories about my aunt before. She is known for many things, but particularly for giving ridiculous gifts. She claims that she gives great care to picking them out, but I think she just walks into a random store, says “eeny-meeny-miney-moe,” and thinks, “Wow, wouldn’t my sister/cousin/best friend/son love that.” When I was 11 years old, she gave me a little red and white outfit. It had a huge set of lips on the front and another set of lips across the back (in satin no less). Just what every mother wants to emphasize on her pre-teen daughter: her budding breasts and ass. Sometime in the 90s, she gave me a green velvet baseball cap from the Gap. This gift was bad enough, but as I opened it, she announced “Look, I have one too. Now we can be twins.” Shudder. The pinnacle of awful gifts has to be from Christmas 1997. I opened an oddly shaped package to find a Franklin Mint Commemorative Plate of the late Princess Diana. I was completely speechless.

Isn’t it time to call a halt to all of this? I’m going to try the donation idea one more time. Maybe everyone will be feeling extra-charitable this year in the wake of Katrina.