“He gave his wife ear clippings from puppies” posted by Mississippienne
Did you know I haven’t eaten a meal of any substance in a week and a half, due to extensive dental work? Just before reading this thread, I was finally able to enjoy one of the finest meals known to modern mankind - Crabmeat AuGratin with a stuffed potato and garlic french bread.
I lost it - you owe me. Total, including tax, was $22.81.
Not my gift, but the story of the bad gift that a friend gave to her brother and sister.
My friend Sarah was in the 8th grade when she came up with the meanest Christmas gift scheme ever. She has a brother 2 years younger than her, and a sister 4 years younger.
She decided to wrap up one giant box and one tiny box, and let her brother and sister fight over which box they got, figuring that they’d both want the big box.
The big box had a dirt clod in it. The small box had a $20 bill.
On Christmas morning, the dispute over the gifts raged long. Finally, her brother ended up with the big box and her sister the small box.
All hell broke loose when the boxes were opened and Sarah’s parents saw what she’d pulled.
I think she was grounded for the entire spring semester. Her brother and sister split the $20.
One possibly in league with the dead grasshoppers and puppy ears… Briefly, some years ago my SIL had some vague idea that I collected bottles. (antique patent medicine bottles) Actually, at that time she had vauge ideas about pretty much everything, but we all figured she was just busy with her lifetime membership in the Creepy Boyfriend of the Month Club. She and I were not especially close, but we were on speaking terms. We drop by her home just before the holidays to exchange gifts, since we won’t be seeing each other on Christmas day. (because I am still remembering the July 4th festivities where she threw a knife at the neighbor’s dog and stuck Mr. July in the leg) At any rate, she had her son run out to the garage and get “those bottles” for me. Back he came with an empty six pack of Coca Cola in a cardboard carton. Not antique, hard to find Coca Cola bottles, just a six pack of New Coke empties they had drank the week before. I laughed, thinking he was kidding, but no, she really was giving me an empty six pack of coke. :smack: She said she had been saving them for me. How cool is that? Well, I shouldn’t have to tell you I was giddy. No bloodshed, and I had received not one, but six matching presents, and they came with their own carrying case.
I thank her, we go home, and yes, I put the bottles under the tree. I was still laughing about them the next morning, when we started to smell something awful. We’re checking the bottoms of everyone’s shoes, and finally narrow it down to the coke bottles in their nifty cardboard container. Upon closer inspection, we discover an oozing, decomposing mouse in the bottom of one. The bottles were hustled outside by the curb, where we could enjoy them from afar. Isn’t always those little, unexpected things that make the holidays so memorable?
Hilarious. Do we have a promising new storyteller here? 
Oh Lord. In comparison, I guess I haven’t gotten anything that horrible.
From great-aunt #1, when I was nine, I got a second-hand maternity top. My mother thinks that the great-aunt was well-intentioned and thought it was a sundress.
From great-aunt #2, we received many amusing gifts. My brother once received girls’ clothing from her. It was definitely girls’ clothing—pink and frilly. Perhaps she mixed up his box with someone else’s, or maybe she forgot his gender. My mother received a tacky soup tureen shaped like a duck in a basket (you lifted the duck part off the basket and the ladle protruded from its side). The funniest present was this big cardboard suitcase designed to store one’s grocery coupons. It had little pockets for all these different categories of food (pasta, condiments, etc).
From my uncle: a copy of the book Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives. He thought I would “find it helpful”. Gee, thanks.
Present that I thought was bad at the time and now regret giving up: Same uncle got us a laptop with modem and tried to explain this whole “Internet” thing to us (it was probably around 1992). I was nonplused and he took it back.
My Secret Snowflake presents last year at work were fairly comical. I got someone who really didn’t know me that well, but I’m an out lesbian, kinda butch, and make no secret of it at work. My big presents at the end of the week were a tiger-striped lipstick case and a little glittery change purse. The coworkers I was sitting with when I opened the presents laughed their asses off at the thought of me using these items.
That is not bizarre or even eccentric. That is crazy. Maybe he should have made a lamp shade.
I once got the same plastic toy phones two Christmases in a row from Santa. They were red and you could put one upstairs and one downstairs with a trailing wire connecting them and call each other. They were fun to play with I suppose but not what I really wanted. My older sister loved them though and was upset when they got broken. So the solution - next year she told Santa that I ‘really’ wanted them again… :rolleyes:
I also got a toy office set (with phone and pencil holder and address book and memo pad etc.) from Santa which I really didn’t want (I was more of a girlie child and I liked dollshouses and teddies and such). The same older sister was responsible for this as I later found out.
Another year when I was about 8 Santa was going to bring me an awful boardgame but my sisters found out about this and asked him if possible to change it, so I got ‘Escape from Colditz’ instead. It was a good game as I later found out when I grew old enough to appreciate it (about 11 or 12) but my older sisters really enjoyed it in the meantime …
I think Santa listened to my sisters too much.
Two years ago I posted this story about my mom sewing a new outfit for her mother as a Christmas gift and getting two towels in return.
Tonight I told my mom some of the stories in this thread. She’s decided the towels weren’t so bad after all.
Oh thank god. When I got to this point in the story I thought you were going to say he got her a pet dog and sealed it up in the box way too early. :eek: See, it could have been worse.
Although ears are pretty bad…his last name wasn’t Gein was it?
Or Van Gogh?
van Roof?
van BowWowWow?
I’ve never gotten anything I wanted for Christmas. The only time it got close was one year when I was about 17. I loved to play the guitar and my mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I specifically told her about a certain guitar strap, which I called “the Neanderthal” because it looked like straps of leather a caveman would sew together. I knew my mom could afford it; it was $27.00, and I told her where she could get it; I knew the colors it came in and I left no stone unturned in order to make sure she would get the right one. Come Christmas time I got a plain beige $8.00 guitar strap. She said she couldn’t find the one I wanted, after all the trouble I took to tell her where to get the goddam thing. My mother could have afforded anything- a $100.00 guitar strap- or even a $100.00 bill, but that’s what I got because she just didn’t feel like making the effort. The day after Christmas I bought the guitar strap I wanted with my own money, at the store where I told her it was. Thanks Mom.
Oops I forgot to say that my mom told me before Christmas came that she got me just what I wanted.
A piece of glass candy. Picture a generic, dull, greenish glass candy ‘wrapped’ in cellophane, only butt ugly. Years later I wonder not only why anyone would buy it to give as a gift, but why anyone would make it in the first place.
I got a Scumbuster one year. It wasn’t the only gift he gave me, but it was the least romantic gift he’s ever given me.
My Crazy Aunt Theresa (actually she’s my mom’s half sister, so Half Aunt Theresa?) gave my brother a… travel size package of knockoff brand Kleenex. It was wrapped and everything.
This was like 2 or 3 yrs ago, he was in his mid 20’s so we were mature enough to not laugh. Until after she left, when we laughed till we almost peed ourselves. WTF?!
Kalhoun This is last year’s. Link to the old stuff.
Yeah. I realized that after I hit Enter. Oh well…too late now.
This is not really a contender, but for Christmas one year, when I was maybe 20, my aunt and uncle (brother and sister, not a married couple) teamed up to give me a dollar-store airbrushed porcelain box shaped like a crying mime face, complete with gold accents. It was truly, spectacularly hideous. They didn’t seem to show any sense of irony about it.
Normally they give me lovely presents, so I don’t really know what happened that year–maybe I pissed them off somehow, or there was a last-minute shopping panic, or something.
