I always see the annual thread about the worst gift you ever received, but I’m curious about the worst one you every GAVE.
Every year I remember the worst gift I ever gave. I was only about 10 years old and was faced with the annual challenge of finding something for my grandfather, a successful big-city lawyer who paid too much attention to social graces and image. What the hell do you give a guy like that. . .on a 10-year-old budget!
After what seemed like hours of looking, I finally threw up my hands (in my mind) and made my selection. . . a coconut that had a monkey face carved on the exterior.
I KNEW it was a terrible gift, but I had to get something! I will NEVER forget the look on his face when he opened it. Being a man with social graces, he said all the right things, but his facial expression screamed “what the hell???” It was priceless
That ranks as the worst gift I ever gave. . .EVER!! It was just embarrassing.
So, tell me your stories. I’d love to hear them. . .so I don’t feel so alone
Oh, goodness, mine was actually given as an adult. I somehow lost track of the years, and came up with a gift for a cousin I’m not close to (who’s enough younger than me that she’s more like a niece,). Anyhow, somehow I thought she was around 9 or 10, and I got her this neat little journal that was all black pages with a set of white, silver and gold glitter gel pens to write in it with. Not all that terrible, but I realized once I saw her that she was 16 years old! :smack:
I mean, *I’d *like a journal like that at 33, but she was at that age where childish things are just, like, :rolleyes: so lame. I should have gotten her a mall giftcard instead.
I’d only been at this new job a few months when a Kris Kringle thing was organised for the break-up party. You know, pick a name out of a hat, spend ten bucks etc?
I HATE buying presents at the best of times, so this one had me stumped. Eventually I settled on a silver and gold ornamental Xmas tree…the kind that sits on a mantlepiece or dresser with little fake gifts wrapped underneath. Not too kitsch (wel, not back then anyway) and suitably generic enough I thought.
How was I to know that the recipient was Jewish? The look on her face was priceless.
One year I gave a sort of blanket gift to several people.
It was a holiday stocking filled with a variety of single serving bottles of various liquors. There were single serving bottles of scotch, bourbon, vodka, gin, rum, tequila, and a variety of single serving mixed drinks, too. I don’t really drink, but was enamored with those little bottles that year.
Unfortunately, I gave one to my pregnant sister-in-law, too. She was newly pregnant and I still don’t know her all that well.
Anyway, I don’t think she found it useful or amusing when I tried to pawn it off for being ‘after the baby- LOL’.
Grandfathers are like that. When I was a kid (pretty young–5 or 6 maybe), I gave my grandfather a single white handkerchief. Not a nice one, just a cheap cotton one. But the only box I could find to wrap it in was a small box in the garage which had contained finishing nails or some such thing. So when he unwrapped it and saw the box, he thought that was what I had given him, and started to pretend that he was very grateful that I had given him a box of finishing nails. (This from a man who, as far as I know, didn’t own any tools and hadn’t worked with his hands since he was perhaps a teenager.) I had to tell him to open it, that the box contained something other than what was advertised on it.
My mother, God rest her soul, gave the absolute worst present ever, though. She was one of the smartest and kindest people I know, so I chalk it up to a brain fart on her part. A friend of hers, whose son I went to school with, dropped by a few days before Christmas to drop of some sort of small gift, like a pound cake or something. My mother, not wanting to receive without giving, quickly cast about for something to give her in return, and pulled out a bottle of wine, sending the lady out the door with this in hand. I then reminded my mother that the woman was an alcoholic. :smack:
Not really. My mom didn’t find it easy to buy for my kids when they reached their teens. She’d ask me what they wanted, I’d tell her, and then she’d buy something else. So the odd gifts are supposed to be from grandma, right?
The year my daughter was 17 or 18, one of her gifts from me was (IMHO) a really pretty knit scarf. When she opened it, she groaned and said “Grandma did it again! This is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen!”
Actually, the bottle of wine might not have been the bad gift you think it was. My husband is a recovering alcoholic and I am just not a big drinker. I am grateful whenever someone gives us a bottle of wine as a hostess gift or what not. Then if in the future we have last minute or unexpected guests, I have something to offer them.
I have an aunt that lives close by, and her entire house is decorated in a Southwest motif, including her kitchen. A few years ago I bought her 3 small prints featuring cartoony French chef- very, very French kitchen things. What was I thinking?! I’ll never know but I feel very :smack: about it. To her credit, she did display them for about a year before quietly tucking them away somewhere, and we now just act like it never happened.
When my friends and I first started exchanging presents back in middle school, we’d always get each other the cheapest, most faux-fancy crapola we could find. I always gave these square things that were wrapped like bullion, and meant to scent your bath. The paper was gold, they were less than a buck…man, I was a cheap kid. To be fair, they usually gave me bath bullion, too. I remember putting a cube in my tub one night and just staring down at it. It didn’t even dissolve.
Duh, they were called bath cubes! They’re still cheap.
If it makes you feel better, I know a LOT of kids when I was around that age (including myself) who LOVED those black journals and were obsessed with funky gel/metallic pens.
Really? Okay, I’m going to pretend you speak for my cousin and let myself off the hook for that one. Seriously, I cringe inwardly every time I see her because of that memory. I usually pride myself on being a really good gift giver, and just felt like I phoned that one in and dialed a wrong number.
But I think I’ll imagine that she enjoyed it, even if it was only secret doodling she pretended to be above during daylight hours.
In 1977, I was twelve and my sister gave me the Star Wars soundtrack. The hitch was that she gave it to me by way of a short scavenger hunt that led to a window where a string went out into the yard, around a few trees and into the backyard where the album was hidden.
She meant it as a cute piece of whimsy, but I read it as a practical joke. A year later, I was thirteen and I decided to outdo her. I used a two pound roll of teabag string (Dad used to work in a Lipton tea plant), and I ran the string out the same window, around the trees in the front yard, wove it through the hedge in the side yard and then went to the backyard for the grand finale. Sis gave up when she got to the backyard. I had to get her gift and try to apologize. I can’t remember what the actual gift was, but it couldn’t have been worth following several hundred yards of string through the bushes.
In my day, it was the clear plastic boxes that were filled with these opague, jewel-toned, round balls filled with bubble stuff. I don’t think they make them anymore. They did a fairly good job of sudsing up but, really, how many of those bath sets does a person need? Even just thinking of them, I immediately equate them with “cheap Christmas gift”.
Ha, or bath oil beads. Those were NASTY. There would be a layer of grease floating on the water as you bathed, and when you got out there would be a film of strongly-scented oil all over you. Probably got my first UTI from trying to use up that Christmas present.
You reminded me of the year I gave a gift to my Mom’s best friend. I was…I don’t know, but younger than ten. I had bought her a kangaroo figurine that was extremely cute, but it hadn’t come with a box, so I used one I found in our trash that was just the right size. She sure was surprised when she took off the paper and thought I’d given her a box of tampons.
A couple of years ago, my husband had mentioned that he’d like a warm robe. I got him one that was very expensive, and felt very soft and wonderful, but was far too big and I couldn’t return it. He’s never worn it once. Actually, I never get him anything he wants. Last year I thought he’d be delighted with satellite radio, but no. He asked me to take it back. This year, he bought himself a Bluetooth headset he wanted and pretends it’s from me.
