So THAT’S where the word comes from. :smack:
How thoughtful. Obviously it was something he needed since he didn’t have one.
Why didn’t I think of this, take something, create a need, give one for a gift.
“How’d you know I needed a new thermos? This is perfect!”
Well, considering he gave it back rather than sold it for drugs really was thoughtful, at least for his twisted mindset. Honestly, this was the nicest thing I’ve ever seen him do.
I am so going to start a new tradition in our families.
My sibling will be easy; sibling spouse, less so, but possible.
The real challenge will be the in-laws. But I’ll find a way.
(I think I start with the family portrait we gave Mom …)
I guess I’ll have to give that years victim recipient a particularly nice gift when I do it. That will make it more difficult, I won’t be able to just pick the easiest victim that day.
Wow, this is a whole new gift-giving experience. I’ve got a ‘little kid’ feeling of anticipation. Thank you so much.
You like showing that picture, don’t you? Not that I don’t understand you, and not that I’m complaining. By the way, why’s your hand on your daughter’s ass?
Closer to the topic, mine isn’t a Christmas gift but a housewarming present given by my then girlfriend. A coffee machine. I had had something like two cups of coffee in my life and hated it, which she knew very well. She didn’t drink coffee either, so it wasn’t that she wanted to be able to make coffee at my place. I didn’t pretend; I just gave her a questioning look, eyes wide. She squirmed and said something about how you have to have a coffee machine.
I don’t have it anymore. I assume she got it when we split.
They also carry their soiled underwear in them (after they’ve lost a case).
just kidding.
A friend of mine once received from her MIL for their first Xmas, a duster–one of the those snap up the front cotten garments women used to clean the house in…There’s no pic, but here is Wikipedia’s definition of one:
ugly as sin. NOT the cool J Peterson’s catalog dusters, nope…
When I was around 10 years old my aunt’s mother-in-law sold Avon products. For 3-4 years around that time my brothers and I each received after shave lotion from the aunt at Christmas. I don’t use after shave lotion now, 40 years later, and I definitely didn’t need it when I was 10.
My father and his girlfriend went to the Bahamas just before Thanksgiving. For Christmas that year, they got me a set of pearl earrings. Dad went on and on about how every young lady should have real pearls, and how they had spent so much time at the shop picking out just the right ones, matching color, size, etc. Girlfriend was very quiet.
The earrings were fake pearls, complete with “Made in China” sticker on the box. The pearlescent coating was already peeling off, showing the plastic underneath. I later discovered that Girlfriend had a beautiful pair of pearl solitare earrings, in addition to the pearl choker Dad got her for Christmas that year.
Dad is oblivious about things like this, and Girlfriend wraps all their outgoing presents, so I’m not sure if he knew about the swap or not.
Of course, I love showing it with the kinds of comments I get on here! As for why my hand is on ass – uhm, because it is nice and round and a perfect resting spot? She’s my baby girl, I can pat her butt anytime I want!
Here’s mine, though it seems very tame compared to many other posts.
There is a pic here. My mother has a couple for lounging around in the house because bathrobes are way too warm for her (hot flashes and stuff). Apparently they were quite ppular for maternity wear.
Geez, that took a lot of nerve. :mad:
I almost forgot: 1 year I received no less than 4 pairs of thinsulate gloves. 1 from Dad, 1 from Mom, 1 from an aunt on either side of the family. After I opened pair #3, I started laughing hysterically. I still bring up that Christmas.
I think I get at least one pair of gloves every Christmas from somebody. It’s the perfect gift – you need to replace the old or lost ones, and they only need a rough idea of the size. I never complain.
One time I got two grapefruit sized rocks.
A couple of distant relatives were traveling across the country. Very nice people, but really dim. They wern’t part of our normal christmas gift web, or even in communication more than once every ten years or so, but while they were in town they stayed with us. That Christmas they sent our family Christmas gifts as a thank you. Normal stuff for all of the rest, and two rocks for me. We were all totally baffled until my dad put it together.
The last time we had seen them, we had all gone to the Denver Natural history museum. I was about 3 and totally hypnotised by the Geology section, with the crystals, and the rocks that glow under black light and such.
But these were just rocks. I even cut one open to see if it was a geode someone had forgotten to open, but nope. Plain ordinary rocks. My dad showed it to a geologist friend from college to see if they were special in anyway, but no, just common pick-up-off the-ground rocks.
That leaves two choices. 1.Either they were so stupid they didn’t understand the difference between cool-rare-geologically-significant rocks, and its-just-a-damn-rock rocks. 2.They were trying to buy cool rocks, but got conned. Either way a wierd gift.
I also got a babies sleeper-footie thing when I was 19. But that was from my grandma who was deeply senile, and really didn’t know what year it was, or what was going on. 
I grew up a military brat, so there was never anything like a big Christmas, there just wasn’t the funds for it. When move time came anytime other than summer it became especially stressful for my parents. The November of my junior year in high school we were transferred from California to Florida. Housing was not available in Florida so that meant we had to find an apt/house to rent. That takes deposits, money my parents didn’t have. So my parents decide we’ll move back to NY and stay with family until after Christmas to save up the money.
As I’m the eldest and at the time the youngest was 1.6 years old, Mom sits me down to tell me not to expect much and that Christmas would be slim as a lot of the extra cash was spent on buying a family of 6 winter clothes we needed. It’s one of those things you just got used to hearing, much like getting used to eating hotdogs and Krarft mac & cheese for 4 days until payday.
Christmas rolls around and the little ones get their toys and warm clothes. I got a rust colored man’s outdoor vest, which engulfed me, and a bottle of Avon perfume with matching lotion. Really, not bad presents. I had never been the girly type to wear perfume, but I figured I would get Avon stuff because my Auntie was a dealer, so it wasn’t a complete shock. At dinner, all gussied up wearing my new perfume and lotion, I discovered something new about myself. I’m allergic to shit. After the upteenth shower, my Dad finally ends up giving me a rather large hot cider toddy so I can fall asleep without scracthing and whimpering (did I mention the lotion was applied everywhere on my body? Not a single missed spot). Looking back, I was lucky it was all topical. Any bath/lotion packages I get from clients are immediately regifted, usually to the group home near my office (I know regifting is bad, but I loathe to throw them away).
My youngest gave me 3 rocks from the front yard landscaping for my birthday one year. He was 3.5. He spent an hour picking out the ‘bestest’. They are still on my desk today.
I remember one year my mother bought me an astronomy cd-rom. It was very thoughtful except that I didn’t own a PC at the time, I had an Amiga.
Erma Bombeck tells a lovely story about the gifts she got from her kids when they were young. One Christmas she got a “crumb scraper,” which was basically half a decorated paper plate with lace around the edge. It didn’t scrape crumbs worth crap.
Now that the kids were older, she got gifts she needed and wanted and could use. But she longed for the days when her five year old looked on eagerly as she unwrapped her “crumb scraper.”
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten any really crappy gifts. However, my husband has gotten some doozies, and from his own mother, no less. He has commented that my mother does a much better job of picking out gifts for him than his does (that’s because she asks me for ideas). My mother-in-law’s thought process seems to be, “Oh, I found this on the clearance rack for $1.99. I’ll buy it and find someone to give it to.” Last year, his parents gave him a button-down shirt with tiny deer all over it. Something my husband would never wear, and if you know him in the least you’d know that. I mean, he’s only 30. I think you have to be at least 60 to wear one of those shirts. For his birthday last year, she gave him a box full of T-shirts that, while brand-name, were horribly ugly and ill-sized. This year they gave him nothing at all for his birthday. When I mentioned it to him he replied that it was just as well.
Ooh, I just thought of one more crappy gift my husband has gotten! Last year his sister sent him one of these beauties.
My crazy uncle (really, actually crazy) always used to tease me when I was growing up. He kept telling me one Christmas that his gift to me was a box full of air. I argued back and forth with him and giggled incredulously all the way up to opening his gift and discovering – a plastic cassette case. Quite literally, a box full of air. Being as I was about 4 years old, I can’t say I was very impressed. Fortunately he also gave me one of those little parachute guys you could drop off a balcony for hours on end.
Disappointed though I was to receive a ‘‘box full of air,’’ I actually had very good use for the thing a few years later. It ended up being decorated in stickers and full of cassettes, so I suppose he is just a forward thinker.