Now, first off, let me say that I love my mom dearly and she’s a sweet person. And I know that some moms have a hard time ever thinking of their cildren as grown - even if we’ve been out of the house for 20 years and live 3000 miles away.
But I’ll bet the almost everyone has gotten something as a gift from their mom where the first thing that goes through your head is “mom, what were you thinkin’??”
Me? I’ve gotten instant “latte flavored” coffee (from Folgers, no less,) as well as things like:
A serving plate in the shape of a fish
A set of bright BLUE pots and pans for the kitchen
Pens and pencils at Christmas (must be an old tradition, I’ve been getting them every Christmas - I’m 41.)
Socks and underwear (again, I’M 41
A hanger for bananas
CD’s - man, these are always interesting. The last time mom knew what I listened too, I was 16.
Goofy chatchkas of all kinds like ceramic cats, the most gawd-awfully fugly salt and pepper shakers and on and on …
So, how about you? What’s mom gotten for you that you’d throw out or give away if it weren’t for the fact that mom comes to visit and would ask too many questions if the chrome plated monkey weren’t sitting on the mantel?
Are you my long-lost brother? We obviously have the same mother!
I have received:
Three salad spinners.
A gross of disposable drink coasters (I think someone got a good chuck of them in a White Elephant exchange).
A Weight Watchers cookbook (thanks for the hint, Ma).
Five hundred million thousand billion candles.
Always a favorite gift choice – headbands and barrettes with googles of beads, ribbons, and glittery things sprouting off of them. I guess this is in case I ever run away from home and join the Icecapades. (Is that one word? I am proud, a little, that I have never, ever, had to write out that word before, and it’s not in my spell check.)
A coconut carved to look like a human head.
Weird underwear. Not kinky weird, just stupid weird.
A plastic gumball machine that we actually tried to use, only the gum doesn’t come out unless you take it apart.
A mini-bed for the cat, that is so mini only his head fits in it, so the rest of his body is on the floor (I guess he does use it, so I can’t complain that much, but honestly!)
A book of baby names (Gee Ma, that one was as sneaky as a Acme safe to the head. If we fell into your subtle trap, and were so enchanted by the book that we accidently had a baby, would you give us a mini-crib?)
I can never ever visit my mom without coming home with underwear and toilet paper. (I’m 30.)
However, I have a theory that it is rooted in post-partum hormones that leave women who have given birth with an unshakeable, Primal Diapering Instinct. I have learned to live with it as it appears to be a lifelong condition.
As long as she buys me tasteful undies and not Scary Granny Pants[sup]TM[/sup], and soft toidy-paper rather than rough single-ply, I’m okay with it.
Every Christmas, my mom gives me several pairs of long underwear. We live in North Carolina. Trudging through snowdrifts is not a common local pastime. Sure, it’s nice to have a pair for winter hiking, but it’s not like I wear out three pairs a year. She’s just worried I’ll get cold. It’s weird, but sweet in a strange Mom way, so I don’t say anything about it.
My mother’s propensity for always having something to give me when I visit her has become a running joke. These are not just gift-giving occasions, this is every time I go to dinner with her.
The usual haul will be some article she cut out of a 1982 Scientific American and, perhaps, a gadget (she’s a gadget freak) she ordered from one of the myriad of catalogs she receives - typically something like a combination channel-lock, penlight and ketchup bottle squeegee, with shoulder holster.
One time I apparently caught her off-guard - the only booty was a can of green beans. I’m taking her out to dinner at a nice, over-priced steakhouse and she wants to make sure I have a can of green beans to take home with me.
sigh
It’s some kind of answer to a psychological need to provide, I suppose.
Anyway, one genuine gift-giving occasion (I think it was Christmas) she gave me an automatic rotary nose hair clipper. One of my all time faves, I later gave it (as a joke, I thought) to a friend for his 45th birthday. A couple of years later he told me it was one of his favorite things (?).
My mother insisted on buying for every male on her shopping list a pair of jeans for Christmas. She always bought them at a local small clothing store that specialized in clothes that were at least 10 years out of style. Some I remember include a pair of normal looking Levi’s jeans except the stitching was done with a shiny gold thread. Another pair was black demin with white pinstripes every half inch. The last 5 or so years my mother was alive everyone would wear their Christmas jeans at Easter. For many, that was the only time some of the jeans were ever worn. I used mine for work pants while working on cars.
Oh, I’ve gotten that banana hanger. And a nail holder…it hold a nail while you hammer it into the wall. And a First Slice thing you bake into a pie so you can easily lift out the first slice. And a mesh bag for air-popped pocorn (for separating the little hulls and unpopped kernels) and two different types of microwave turntables and two microwave popcorn poppers, and a mini-pie baker, and two ice cream freezers (different sizes).
The good part is, when I needed a cherry pitter for work and couldn’t find one in the stores for less than $12, I went to my mom’s kitchen drawer and found three! (the one she gave me was temporarily misplaced in a move…of course she had given me one!)
Engagement Present: 6 pairs of cotton “Grandma Style” Underpants and a white cotton nighty with embroidered holes down the front (right over my nipples)?? What was she thinking.
Christmas: Black top and skirt combination more suited to her age group than mine. Proven by the fact that the 60 year old family friend I sat next to at Christmas lunch was wearing the same outfit (I was about 22 at the time).
Thank-goodness I have now trained her to just ask first.
Weird gadget to toast cheese sandwiches over an open flame.
A voluminous nightgown with a large floral print and lots (and I mean lots) of ruffles. In a rather stiff cotton, so the ruffles really stood out. Actually, it didn’t look too bad “in theory”, but looked dreadful when I wore it.
Bless her heart, she’s gotten better at it now. But when I was a kid, my dad gave me or one of my sisters “Christmas money” so that we could buy gifts for him, but they’d “officially” be from her. (He was in charge of all the finances, she didn’t want anything to do with that, so if he wanted any Christmas gifts from his wife, he had to give her the money!) We’d wrap up the gifts, say they were from her, (and she knew about it, of course) and all was well. Nothing put more fear into his heart than to think that my mom was out on the town (shudder) buying gifts for him. A few times something slipped through the cracks and she was let loose with his gift money, and nothing good ever came of it.
Man, this is cracking my up!
I too am a victim of the “knickers-by-post” syndrome that everyone elses mothers seem to have. She also sends me scarves and gloves (yeah ma, cos you can’t buy good winter clothes in SWEDEN!?)
Unfortunatly the worst present is a fairly fucking tragic tale. She sent us fridge magnet as a wedding present. I have never been so ashamed in my life.
For me it was my “Weird Aunt Margaret”. When she traveled around the country, she would send me rocks, pieces of wood and shells that she thought were especially attractive (some of those rocks were good sized too).
When I was in the Peace Corps on a tropical island in the Pacific Ocean, she sent me sweaters, gloves, hot chocolate and little tiny tools.
By the way, while I was in the Peace Corps I would mail her coconuts by putting her name and address and postage on the outside of the nut. She said she loved them and wanted more.
My mother has very strange ideas about what I like. Christmas and birthdays aren’t so bad, because she’ll normally ask me or MrsWarrior what to get… the worst is the stuff she brings back from abroad.
The most memorable one was a carved wooden duck, which sat on a shelf, dangling a fishing rod over the side - sonds nice enough, except - It was an EVIL duck… it just had the most evil expression in its beak and eyes… anyway, it sat on a shelf until we moved house, and the naughty removal men <cough> broke it…
She brought me back a scary porcelain cat from Malta as well - despite the fact that I had repeatedly asked her to bring me back a falcon… and guess what? Those clumsy removal men broke that too… the only two things in the whole house they damaged…
For years my mom would give me clothes in cream or neutral colors. Problem: I only wear black (100% of the time). She would also give me gold jewelry (I only wear silver). One year I got a gorgeous silver necklace with black beads. I loved it! She was shocked – she said “your father picked it! Do you really like it?” (Thanks, Dad!!) I finally mentioned Mom’s odd taste in presents to my sister – she must have said something to mater because in the past few years my parents have decided to give me cash gifts and let me buy my own. Poor Mom. I held on to those neutral clothes for years before having the heart to donate it to Goodwill…
I only ever wear black clothes as well (well, except for my work shirts - very hard to find decent black shirts)! Is there any particular reason you do?
TV Time, I’ll see your Weird Aunt Margaret and raise you a Crazy Aunt Christi. Every Christmas, she sends us large and bulky packages of very odd clothing. Her fashion sense seems to be permanently stuck in the '80s, so there’s always lots of glitter, feathers, and denim involved. And the clothes are usually missing buttons or ripped around the seams. She does crafts, too. One year, she sent us a giant cardboard box filled with styrofoam packing peanuts. The attached note read “Everybody take one.” Digging amongst the peanuts revealed Christmas ornaments-- with the hooks removed, so they were just shiny balls–decorated with bark, lace, feathers, sequins, etc. Mystifying.
My mother always makes a point of giving me an odd gift. She does it on purpose, and I look forward to them. Good odd gifts she’s given include the largest available box of Crayola crayons, a rock tumbler, and a kit for assembling my own 6-inch insect out of balsa wood.
Once, when I was about 20, my mother “surprised” me with a set of three garfield underwear for xmas.
Not **just ** Garfield underwear, but musical Garfield underwear.!
Yes, you pressed a little tiny square at the waist and music played.
I never wore em, figuring someone would accidentally bump me and then…“Hey! Wheres that music coming from?”
My mum gave us a breadmaker for our wedding which would have been great if it didn’t happen to be a recycled christmas gift which I had given her a couple of years before. She didn’t even bother wrapping it, or cleaning it (she’d used it a couple of times.)
I actually asked her why she was giving it back and she said she never used it and as I’d chosen it I must have liked it. Seems unwanted gifts work both ways, still thought it was a bit harsh.
