When I was a kid my Mom’s friend stayed with us. My Mom took off valuable time from work that she didn’t really have to chauffer her pal around, including to two or three “family lunches” 1.5hr round trip to which my Mom wasn’t (really) invited. She shopped while it went on. For a week to 10 days my Mom wined and dined her - My mom basically broke her back and went all out for this lady - above and beyond.
She didn’t expect anything for it at all. And yet when the lady, fairly well-heeled certainly uppermiddle class, perhaps some percentage of you would call her “rich” left - she left a short 2 sentence thank-you note and a ‘token’ for my mom : a Rubber stamper of Pogo – the cartoon character sort of like these things. No ink pad. My Mom didn’t have any particular affinity for Pogo nor was it a shared joke between friends. It was just a very odd thing to do. No gift would have been fine – my Mom wasn’t offended (I was – but partially I was just a greedy kid) but my Mom saw it as weird as hell - & over time I have come to appreciate it as eccentrically very odd as well.
Ironically over the years it became a gift that gave a great deal of pleasure, maybe one of the best gifts ever: every Xmas, b-day and wedding we joke about giving/getting a Pogo stamp - we really got some laughs out of it.
Thnx overlyverbose: I never would have guessed in a million years I would ever have a reason to tell this story, but there we are.