I’m not talking about the pair of socks from a distant aunt here. I’m talking about gifts that you got from someone close to you, a gift that was really nice, but you just don’t want/need/like it.
Two examples of my own:
For our second anniversary of our first date, my husband (fiance at the time) gave me a snow globe of Cinderella and Prince Charming. It was nice, as far as snow globes go, but I don’t have a fondness for snow globes or Cinderella. So, I tried my best to appear thrilled and touched, but he could tell something was wrong. Turns out, he remembered me picking up a little plastic snow dome once in a store and shaking it up and commenting on the cuteness of snow domes. He didn’t know the difference. He also thought the couple in the globe was Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip (one of my favorite Disney films). In case you were wondering, he replaced that gift with a Buzz Lightyear toy.
On my most recent birthday, my in-laws gave me a beautiful (and very expensive) gold chain, and a set of jade charms shaped like elephants. It was actually very thoughtful (as their gifts usually are), because I really like elephants. However, you would think that after knowing me for over four years, they’d know that I never wear jewelry (other than my engagement and wedding rings). In fact, the last time I wore jewelry was at my wedding, and I commented to my m-i-l how uncomfortable I felt wearing a necklace, bracelet, etc. The chain is too expensive for me to feel comfortable wearing it to work, and besides, I have no idea what kind of outfit goes with jade elephants.
So, tell me about your “really nice, but frankly I don’t like it” gifts you’ve received, and what did you do about it?
My mother loves to buy me clothes. Unfortunately, she picks out garments that work well with her body shape, not mine…and she always picks out stuff that MUST be dry cleaned or hand washed. If it doesn’t go in the washer, I don’t wear it. The things usually don’t fit, either. Generally, I just sort of wander over to the Women’s Shelter and make a donation. This works because we don’t live in the same town.
I admit, I’m hard to buy gifts for, but I do wish that she’d quit trying to dress me. I’m 43 years old!
For my birthday a couple of years ago, my dad & his wife bought me a really nice pair of shorts, with a top to match. They buy me clothes a lot (but unlike Lynn’s mother, it’s rare that they go wrong with them). However, this particular set is in a shade of blue that looks particularly hideous on me. It’s not an ugly shade–it’s that soft grayish blue. I actually like the shade quite a lot, and I have a lot of stuff in my house that’s that particular shade. I just can’t wear it.
My sister-in-law, on the other hand, has a knack for getting just the right thing. I was at her house one night, and was commenting on a nice set of wine glasses that she and my brother had, and I mentioned that I had no wine glasses at all. My SIL wasn’t in the room when I said this, but she was apparently close enough to overhear me say this. Christmas was just a couple of weeks away, and when it came, my gift from them was…you guessed it, a set of wineglasses, just like theirs. I thought that was quite cool.
My graduation present from this sweet lady at church. I adore her, I really do, and she has perfect taste. But I’m not a fine jewelry person.
But it it a great necklace, a sliver pendant with lapis and some grey stone, matches my coloring perfectly, bringing out my eyes. It it large enough to be stunning and noticable, but very elegant and so far from gaudy it was amazing.
I’d try it on and look at myself, amazed at what a perfect piece of jewelry it is, that I’d never wear in public.
Oh well.
Other than that amazing failure of a sucess, I’m pretty easy to make happy.
I hate pretty much every gift. What I like is when my wife says “I’m ordering some books from Amazon and charging 'em to the company. Got two or three titles you want me to tack on for you?”
Every year for Christmas my uncle always buys us some really nice salmon. Normally this would’t be a problem, but everyone in my house is a vegetarian. We don’t eat fish. My dad doesn’t want to hurt his feelings, so he tells him that it was great and that we loved it. As a result of this we have about five years worth of salmon in our cabinets.
Not exactly a gift, but when my grandmother died, I was given one of her diamond rings. However, I’m not a jewelry person, and I’m not all that crazy about diamonds anyway. To be perfectly cold and callous, I’d just as soon sell it, but I’ll just pass it on to my daughter, who doesn’t like diamonds either.
I feel so hateful just saying that.
The one thing that meant the most to me from among my grandparents’ things is a print of a sailboat at anchor. It’s next to my desk here at the house, and it brings back all the best memories of being a kid at their house. And the ring is in my jewelry box on my dresser.
The most useless gift I didn’t like was a gift that I asked for.
When I first started working, I carried all my papers around in a little nylon tote bag from the Betsy-Tacy society. When my parents asked what I wanted for Christmas, I jumped at the chance to tell them I would really like, and really have a use for (two things my parents’ gifts are not known for) a nice briefcase.
In an ususually wise move, they ask my brother to pick it out, assuming that he will have a better sense of what a young-ish person might like in a briefcase.
So I open my Christmas present with great anticipation. In the box is a lovely briefcase. It looks a bit like a school satchel (sp?), in slightly weathered black leather. Inside, it has all the nifty little compartments for your pens and calculator and what-nots.
The problem? It weighs about 40 pounds. Empty. Sometimes my mom thinks it is cute to put another little gift inside of a bag, so when I pick it up and feel how heavy it is, I think “oh how nice, they also gave me the Rosetta Stone!” Or, that it is leather lined with lead, in case I have to carry around any kryptonite.
So it sits on the floor of my closet. Stupid briefcase. If I put two pieces of paper in it, I wouldn’t be able to carry it at all. I toyed with the idea of foisting it off on someone in the white elephant exchange, but I fear the postage on it would be akin to the national debt.
My mother-in-law bought me this absolutely lovely set of pearls, a necklace and a bracelet. However, I have never been particularly fond of pearls, not to mention the fact that I don’t own any clothes dressy enough to wear with pearls in the first place. They are just sitting in a box in my dresser. I’ll probably keep them until my daughter grows up and then I will give them to her.
I got lots of nice gifts I didn’t like for my high school graduation. Several family friends and relatives gave me jewelry–mostly necklaces–featuring charms inscribed with “2000” or “class of 2000.” I enjoy wearing small pieces of jewelry, and will wear a charm necklace as long as it holds special meaning to me. But my high school years never held any special meaning, and I have no desire to wear a necklace that reminds me of that place. I have seriously thought about having some of the charms–along with my high school ring–melted down into some nice earrings.
Another gift I got from graduation was from a cousin who took my graduation invitation to a lady who made it into a “shadowbox.” She mounted the front of the announcement and the message inside under a piece of think paper, and attached several small handmade paper roses and curls etc. around the annoucement. She completed the box with a piece of glass and a gold frame. It took quite a bit of time to make, and looks very beautiful. However, as I’ve said before, I hated high school. I got that place out of my life last May, and I don’t want anything else to do with it.
I used to work with this sweet German boy who had a huge crush on me (which, of course, I was too oblivious to pick up on). We washed dishes together at a restaurant, and he had this very thick accent. Plus, it was very noisy in the back where we worked, so sometimes he would say something to me that I couldn’t hear or understand, and rather demand that he repeat it, I’d just nod and smile. Apparently, once he mentioned that he really liked the Grateful Dead, and then asked me if I liked them. And apparently, I nodded and smiled, because he slowly began to give me the world’s largest collection of bootleg Grateful Dead tapes. By the time I quit the job, I had almost thirty, plus several of their CDs. Unfortunatly, I’m not a Grateful Dead fan in the least–I dislike jam bands and I love punk–so this collection is really lost on me. I eventually gave them to this hippie boy I met at college, who appreciated them so much more than I could, and watching his total excitement at recieving this bootleg Dead collection made me realize what an awesome gift it was, and I felt really guilty.
