My grandmother once gave me a bag of hard candies that she’d had so long they’d melted together (we nicknamed it the “E-Pluribus-Unum bits”). Other great gifts she gave over the years included half a bottle of talcum powder wrapped in tinfoil, a baked pear the dogs wouldn’t eat [we know that for a fact- we tried], a can of salmon, etc… Lest you think we’re talking about a poor old woman who was giving her spoiled grandkids all that her widow’s mite could buy, she was richer than we were, just Hetty-Green-level-psycho stingy.
I hate thoughtless gifts. One year my brother and his wife gave me Jean Auel’s THE PLAINS OF PASSAGE because “it just seemed like a book that you’d really like”. Irritating, because if you know anything about that book it’s the fourth in a series (says so on the dust jacket) and I hadn’t read the first three, which let me know that they didn’t choose it for me but rather saw a book that was on the display table at the front of the store, grabbed it, and said “Jon’s shopping’s done… who’s next?”
I won’t call it my worst gift, but the most wildly inappropriate gift I ever got was one of the most touching and one of my favorites. I still have it. Slight back story necessary:
My mother had an employee, Irene, at the group-home she managed. Irene’s mother, Miss Claire, an 80-something lady with either Alzheimer’s or some similar mind clouding age related infirmity, was constantly calling Irene on the phone at the place (the ability to dial and remember phone numbers had not yet been taken from her). Most of the time it was my mother who answered the phone at the place, and if Irene wasn’t working that day (which could well mean that she was with Miss Claire but out of the room) she’d talk to my mom instead. In time she’d call the place, her daughter Irene would answer, and Miss Claire would say “Hey Baby, I called to talk to Blanche”, because she’d just as soon talk to my mother as to her daughter.
In time she got the two conflated and would refer to my mother as her daughter. In letters to her Congressmen or calls to her daily call lists she’d tell them if challenged on anything that “my daughter Blanche used to be a teacher and says [something wildly irrelevant]”. When her real daughter, Irene, a bit insulted, reminded her that ‘Blanche is white, Mama, we’re black… doesn’t that tell you something?’, the old lady merely said ‘Guess she took after her daddy.’
Anyway, wrapping it up, Miss Claire had been a seamstress her entire life (in fact she worked with Rosa Parks [a seamstress by profession for those who didn’t know] whom she’d known from childhood). She knew my mother’s age (my mother was in her 60s when they became friends) but also heard my mother refer to me as “her baby” (meaning her youngest child, of course, and as an endearment). She’d usually follow it with “Of course, my baby is 35 years old”.
One year Miss Claire sent me a Christmas present. She’d never met me or talked with me, but she sent it through her daughter to my mother to me, beautifully wrapped and addressed to Jon… Blanche’s baby. (She’d gotten upset with my mother one time because she hadn’t met me, “and he’s my only grandson! You know Irene’s not gonna have any children, old and dried up as she is!”) Irene and my mother were both dying to know what was in this beautifully/delicately wrapped package, one of the few I’ve ever opened slowly to save all of the paper from (brown paper decorated with drawings and glitter- a total crash course in “How to wrap gifts during the Depression”). Inside was my gift: a hand sewn, hand stitched baby bonnet and bib with the most delicate hand stitching and seams you’ve ever seen and my name, JON [even spelled write- that almost never happens], embroidered on the bib, her gift to Blanche’s baby. (Over the years I started to give the bonnet to a couple of friends who had babies because it is a handmade treasure for a baby, but I just can’t.)
For a less syrupy “worst gift”: one year my sister gave me a do it yourself home cholesterol testing kit and a blood sugar monitor (at the time I wasn’t diabetic— though I’ve had blood sugar problems in recent years I’m still not a diabetic and I’ve never been advised to keep a blood sugar monitor). It was such a wonderful way to say “Welcome to middle age… next year: bladder control panties!”
