# Presents that totally failed **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 9, 2023, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871 "2023-11-09T16:08:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![gre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d78d45/32.png) [@gre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gre)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/41 "2023-11-09T21:48:48Z")
My father was not big on Christmas or on my mother by this point, so we’d stop at the pharmacy in town quickly on the day before Christmas to pick up a few small things and call it done. I was 12 or 13 and never felt confident about picking out a present, but I chose a World Almanac and thought I’d done decently. The only thing I really knew she liked specifically was peanut m&ms, but I knew she’d flip out over a three-dollar gift, whereas ten bucks was quite a respectable amount to me at that age and economic level. And I still had some notion at that age of adults being more…book-smart or book-oriented than they really are. She attacked me for years afterward, accusing me of buying the almanac for myself. ---
**Author:** ![glee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b5a626/32.png) [@glee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glee)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/42 "2023-11-09T22:10:16Z")
I had just come in the top half of the British Chess Championship when an elderly aunt bought me a chess book … ‘Learn Chess’. I know she meant well… ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/43 "2023-11-09T22:29:14Z")
I get a lot of “Birds in Your Backyard!”-type books. Anyone who has given me one knows, in theory, that I have an entire book case of world-wide, region-specific bird identification guides, ornithology books, and checklists. A Barnes & Noble remaindered copy of “12 Most-Common West Coast Feeder Birds!: And How to Feed Them!” is not on the mark (though at least they understand that I like bird-watching). ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/44 "2023-11-09T22:50:40Z")
Are you a man or a woman, and how old were you and he at the time? ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/45 "2023-11-09T22:57:58Z")
Cat paraphilia? That’s awfully kinky! (rimshot) ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 10:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/46 "2023-11-09T22:59:57Z")
This one, perhaps? > **[Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love... by Forward, Susan](https://www.amazon.com/Men-Hate-Women-Love-Them/dp/0553381415)** > > Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them : When Loving Hurts and You Don't Know Why \[Forward, Susan, Torres, Joan\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them : When Loving Hurts and You... ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/47 "2023-11-09T23:08:42Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Are you a man or a woman, and how old were you and he at the time? Man, about 12. Technically a boy. He would have been 26. ---
**Author:** ![Toxgoddess](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Toxgoddess](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Toxgoddess)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/48 "2023-11-09T23:10:33Z")
Another t-shirt entry. An over-sized extra large t-shirt with our dog’s face on it for my birthday. I have no idea why he thought I would love this. I slept in it once or twice and then gave it to the thrift shop. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/49 "2023-11-09T23:11:09Z")
> [@gre](#): > > She attacked me for years afterward, accusing me of buying the almanac for myself. That says far more about her than you. When I was a kid and bought my mom a crappy present, she thanked me and kept it. ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/50 "2023-11-09T23:25:33Z")
> [@Toxgoddess](#): > > Another t-shirt entry. An over-sized extra large t-shirt with our dog’s face on it for my birthday. I have no idea why this cracks me up so much, but it does. Thanks for sharing! ---
**Author:** ![gre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d78d45/32.png) [@gre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gre)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2023, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/51 "2023-11-09T23:43:30Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > When I was a kid and bought my mom a crappy present, she thanked me and kept it. I was just trying to pin down what year that was, and it’s possible I was actually 15. I so hope not. Although if anyone was brought up to still be that clueless at 15, it was me. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/52 "2023-11-10T00:28:47Z")
> [@Toxgoddess](#): > > Another t-shirt entry. An over-sized extra large t-shirt with our dog’s face on it for my birthday. I have no idea why he thought I would love this. FWIW, my mother did appear to actually like the coffee mugs I got her with pictures of her cats on them. > [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > When I was a kid and bought my mom a crappy present, she thanked me and kept it. I suspect, however, that while she might have wanted the first set of cat or dog salt-and-pepper shakers that I gave her when I was a child, she had no use for another set each year for several years. But, as you say, she thanked me and kept them. – she did sometimes grumble to me about something my sister had given her. But I don’t think she complained to the sister – except about the time the sister, just graduated from college, offered to stay home for a year so my SAHM could go get a paid job. My mother was furious; she thought she was being told that the work she’d been giving her life to didn’t count. I’m not sure I ever got either of them to understand that my sister was trying, very generously from her point of view, to give my mother what my sister wanted for herself; the problem was that it wasn’t at all what my mother wanted. (My sister got the work she wanted. My mother continued to run the household; and running that particular household right really was a full time job, which she did well.) ---
**Author:** ![JaneDoe42](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/janedoe42/32/14104_2.png) [@JaneDoe42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JaneDoe42)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/53 "2023-11-10T00:52:58Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > (my bolding). Wow, I really hope that was an autocorrect issue. Yeah, well, I probably had one of them in a box as well, LOL! (My poor mother worked so hard to help me get at least a C in grade skul speeling and then auto-correct came along to ruin everything) > [@gre](#): > > She attacked me for years afterward, accusing me of buying the almanac for myself. That is so sad. My mother always thanked us for our gifts, no matter how cheap and tacky they were. I was around 30 when I busted her hiding an unwanted gift from a grandkid in the bottom of the trash to be sure it wasn’t found by anyone who might tell the gifter. > [@susan](#): > > (though at least they understand that I like bird-watching). That was my feeling about my inadvertent cat tchotchke collection. At least they knew I like cats. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/54 "2023-11-10T01:09:25Z")
My wife, Mama\_Zappa on the SDMB, and I have been together long enough that I struggle with what to get her for celebrations. One year she was complaining that the only type of CPAP chin strap she likes was no longer available. This peeved my bride no end. I did some inspired web searching, and found one, even in her size. This, I thought, was GREAT! Something she needed, something she’d use every day, something she couldn’t get for herself, and something that wasn’t too expensive. The perfect gift! Xmas morning I hand her the package, all smiles. She opened it, and said “You shouldn’t have. You. Really. Should. Not. Have.” And then explained to me, in small words so I would understand, that medical equipment was not an appropriate Christmas gift. I lost a lot of good husband points that morning. And like solost I expect to be reminded of this every winter for the rest of my years. ---
**Author:** ![gnarator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gnarator/32/8266_2.png) [@gnarator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnarator)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/55 "2023-11-10T01:14:48Z")
One Christmas, a girlfriend gave me a loofah on a stick. She said my back was “kind of grainy.” ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/56 "2023-11-10T01:15:01Z")
> [@susan](#): > > though at least they understand that I like bird-watching As a rule of thumb, it’s unwise to buy someone a present in a field they care a lot about. They probably know what’s “good” much better than you do, and likely have all the obvious items they might want. Some friends gave me puzzles as a thank you for doing something for a group. Let’s just say they weren’t puzzles i would have taken from a “free stuff” pile. I said, “thank you”. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/57 "2023-11-10T01:18:03Z")
I like science fiction and would probably describe myself as a nerd. That doesn’t mean I like every stereotypically geeky thing. Yet that often seems to be my parents’ assumption when getting gifts for me. For example: - A t-shirt celebrating “Pi Day” in 2015. I really didn’t give a crap about Pi Day. I do wear it, just because I don’t want to waste a perfectly good shirt, but it’s really not a shirt I would have picked. - A set of throw pillows that look like the “ctrl”, “alt”, and “del” keys. I really don’t need or want any kind of throw pillows, but even if I did I don’t necessarily want my home’s decor to scream “geek”. (I kind of think this one partly falls under the passive aggressive “Mom thinks I need to have throw pillows on my couch” category). ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/58 "2023-11-10T01:44:08Z")
> [@WildaBeast](#): > > A set of throw pillows that look like the “ctrl”, “alt”, and “del” keys. I’m no fan of throw pillows but those are great! Sooo tacky in a geek-forward way. If I still had an IT firm with a waiting couch in the reception area it’d totally want those pillows. At home? Fuggedaboudit. Not speaking specifically to you or about those pillows, but it’s sorta fun to read of all the parents who’re now getting even with their now-adult kids for all the inappropriate schlock the kids got them when they were young or teens. Buying gifts across a generational divide is apparently hard no matter what the giver’s or the recipient’s age. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/59 "2023-11-10T02:38:16Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Buying gifts across a generational divide is apparently hard no matter what the giver’s or the recipient’s age. There’s also the fact that my parents, and I would wager most parents buying gifts for adult kids, seem to assume I still like all the same things I liked 20 years ago. Now I just tell them to get me something off my Amazon Wish List. Which works for the most part except for the fact they can never remember how to access it and ask me to sent them a link to it every year. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2023, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871/60 "2023-11-10T02:48:16Z")
For many years my attitude has been if I can’t eat it or drink it I don’t want it. Likewise I much prefer to give gifts of the same genre. Nobody ever has that guilt-ridden “how do I get rid of this without offending the giver?” problem. If I gave you some food that you thought was gross, just pitch it. if you’re really backbone-challenged, just leave it in your fridge until its fuzzy, then pitch it. That way it’s not your fault. Whether you loved it or hated it, either way I won’t be expecting to see it again the next time I visit 6 months from now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/presents-that-totally-failed/992871.md?page=4)