Last year for Christmas, my older sister gave me and my three younger sisters nearly identical gifts: flannel pajamas with flowers (each a different color), a button-up sports team jersey and a t-shirt. I don’t wear pajamas, I wear nightshirts/nightgowns. I got a White Sox jersey, I do not wear button-up shirts, the only sports team I’ve ever shown any interest in is the Bulls and my one sister who is a major White Sox fan got some other team. My t-shirt was Winnie-the-Pooh, I own NOTHING Winnie-the-Pooh related and my one sister who collects Winnie-the-Pooh got some other cartoon character. And it’s not like I don’t give her the list of what I’d like that she asks me to make every year. And she gives the 4 of us cookie-cutter gifts like this almost every year. I’d do the same to her, except I buy for my other sisters as individuals, not as multiple versions of the same person.
Thanks Wonko. I’ll keep you in mind. Maybe we can
go somewhere good and have a real B-day dinner! **
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Very cool. Send me an email from my profile page when that time 'o year rolls around!
but my mom bought me a knit top that was brown. It had a V collar. And sewn inside the collar was a tan turtleneck dickie. This thing looked like a costume from “Lost in Space”! And she bought it for me when I was in my mid 20’s!
But my birthday itself is great. It’s October 28.
[ul]
[li]The weather’s great. It’s not oppressively hot nor frigidly cold.[/li][li]The leaves are just about at peak color.[/li][li]It’s too far past back-to-school to get the OP’s type of presents.[/li][li]It’s too soon before Christmas to get crappy presents because your parents are saving the good stuff for Xmas. (My half-sister is a Christmas baby, so I imagine that affected her BD haul.)[/li][li]I’m always invited to a party around that time (Halloween). So even if it’s not for my BD, I can pretend it is. (I once went to a friend-of-a-friend’s Halloween party, and she actually made a birthday cake for me! What a sweetheart!)[/li][/ul]
The one drawback was that my sister’s BD was the day after mine. So for family birthday dinners, we shared a cake. But since she was 5 years, 365 days older than me (I was born in a leap year), we never had shared parties with our friends.
For my ninteenth birthday, my grandma sent me a AAA guidebook for Chicago from 1984. I don’t understand this. I had just moved to Asheville (NC) and I don’t think I’ve ever shown any interest in Chicago in my life.
By the way, my ninteenth birthday was in 1999. She kept the guidebook for 15 years.
Over the past few years, my grandmother has decided to clean out her closets when the grandkids’ birthdays roll around. Most of this stuff she bought and then just hoarded away for some weird reason. Last week I got a gold and white bedspread that is probably older than me (34 years), still in the original box. I understand, she doesn’t have a lot of money for gifts, but frankly I’d rather she just showed up for dinner.
All-time worst gift was for Christmas. An old boyfriend of mine apparently had his mom shop for a gift for me, which is lame enough, but he clearly didn’t even look at it before it was wrapped. (I should mention that he was 25 and I was 21.) I opened the box to discover a two-piece (baggy top & stretch leggings) BLACK AND SILVER TIGER-STRIPED outfit. :eek: HIS face turned beet red, and he muttered something about exchanging it. Later, when I met his mom for the first time, she made a comment to him about my “conservative” dress - a rainbow colored turtleneck and jeans, lol - and eventually I wound up with a (skin-tight) lavender and pearl-decorated sweater. :rolleyes:
My Great Aunt Maud couldn’t remember whose birthday was when. My sister got three gifts a year whilst my brother and I got none. It was OK though, how many croched (sp?) items could a girl want?
Damn, it’s not me, but it is the crappiest gift ever, so can I still play?
My friend…brain tumor…getting chemo…her hair fell out…poor prognosis.
For her birthday, her brother got her…brush/comb/hand mirror set.
She still hasn’t figured that one out. Gallows humor? Just a jerk? Completely clueless? All three?
Shaky Jake
A Miss Piggy watch from my Aunt June (who I love very much and normally gave great gifts). It was a “no particular occasion” gift, so it was right out of the blue. She pulled it out at the Pizza Hut we were eating at, and my Grandmother carried on and on about how DARLING it was, etc. I put it on and said it was the greatest thing ever, and my older sisters ragged me relentlessly.
Zette
My Grandmother is terrible about this. My parents always tell her “Thetis, just purchase one thing from their Christmas lists, just one, and give them that. That’s it,” but she never listens. Quantity is better than quality, I suppose. She always buys us about a jillion pieces of crap, which we all dutifully return to Wal-Mart, Target, or various other low price stores the very next day. A whole lot of junk that ends up netting like, $25.
We were always so excited when we opened our mounds of presents, only to freeze our experssions, and slowly morph into confused, pained expressions. She’s never caught on.
–Tim
2 items:
First is mine, but christmas. My grandmother (the poor grandparents just can’t seem to get it right, can they?), who was sporadic at best with gift-giving, sends me a box. In the box, I find six (6) squat, restaurant-style jars of Heinz condiments: three ketchup and three dijon mustard. I have never tried to understand this. I did have fun composing a thank you note, though. Poor lady has finally succumbed almost completely to dementia. At the time, she was still living on her own.
Second is my roommate. She and her girlfriend are going through a bit of a figuring-out-where-they-are stage. She just had her birthday, and said GF gave her her gift, which was the adoption of MANATEE in her name. The manatee is named Flash. As my other roommate said, “Nothing says ‘I don’t know how I feel about you’ like a manatee.”
The worst gift I think I’ve ever received was a Christmas gift.
My Girl Scout Troop was doing a Christmas gift exchange, where
you drew a name and got that girl a gift.
It was anonymous.
We were 11, I think, and we had a spending limit of $5.
For the person I drew, I found a pretty good Parchesi board on sale.
When I opened my gift, I found it was a Mead spiral bound notebook,
one of the 3inch x 5inch ones, that was mostly used up and very dog eared.
Very weird.
I took it as philosphically as possible for an 11-year old could, I suppose.
When my mom asked me if I was upset about the gift I lied and said no,
because I had picked out a crappy gift for someone the year before.
I was actually pretty sad, though.
When I was 17 my grandma asked what color sweater I wanted for Christmas,
so I said Green. I should have been more specific. I was picturing hunter green,
but instead I got a Lime green one, hand crocheted by my grandma, acrylic yarn and everything,
in a very unflattering style.
I never had to wear it, though, because a week after Christmas our house burned down.
At least there was a bright side to the house fire, eh? 
Christmas 1969 - as usual, I’d been snooping around the packages in the corner of my folks’ bedroom and I saw what I was CERTAIN was the portable record player I’d been hoping for. Imagine my delight when it turned out to be a suitcase!! And I was just bitchy enuff to whine about it, making Mom feel bad enough to give me the receipt so I could return it, tho in the long run, it was a very useful gift.
Christmas 1971 - I was helping Mom wrap a couple of scarves she got as “just-in-case” gifts - so if someone brought her something and she wasn’t expecting it, she’d be able to return the favor. Well, Christmas morning and we’d just about finished opening our gifts when Mom noticed what had struck me about an hour earlier - my sibs got tons more gifts from her than I did. I was trying not to be greedy - heck, I was a HS senior - so I was hard pressed to be delighted when she gave me one of the generic scarves - how special is that??
Me too. Christmas 1981… 3rd Grade. We did a secret-Santa type gift exchange. I brought a really neat die-cast metal Space Shuttle Matchbox car-type thing.
What did I end up with? A pair of 4 foot long, bright royal blue, nylon shoelaces. They were too big for my shoes, and a terrible color besides.
The worst part was after everyone opened their gifts, everyone got time to play with their stuff, but there’s not much you can do with shoelaces if the teacher specifically warns you against lassoing or tying up your classmates.
I was so dissappointed that I almost started to cry. In retrospect, they turned out to be surprisingly useful for general tying down of things when I was a Boy Scout, so I guess they were sort of a delayed-fuze gift.
My first birthday after we got married my dh gave me a book about gardening. I wasn’t mean about it, but he could tell that I was disappointed. He has gottn much better about it since then. He usually isn’t here for it though. Here is a list of other things I have gottn for my birthday:
17th-may car broke down
18th-nothing
20th-grandfather died
21st-fiance on deployment
23rd-a hurricane
25th-dh was at his grandfather’s funeral
26th(soon)-dh on deployment
I think I’ll skip them from now on.
gottEn