worst gifts is a curse in my family my mother got front breaks and a muffler for her car. my xw got a box of mac and cheese from her mother at least it was kraft . my sister 2 packages of blank vcr tapes from mom when she asked for dvr discs my BIL got one pair of socks rolled up and put into an answering maching box again my sister got a slap from my xw I got a carton of cigs and a slimjim penny bank with only one slim jim in it most of these gifts wer from my sd wich equalls stepdad
MY siblings and I loved the footsie pajamas we got around that age …
Phoenix, I always get my newest nieces tools for Christmas ; I am glad some ladies appreciates them.
(My theory is a husband is a wonderful thing to want, but a terrible thing to need; I always get them jar openers and multi-bit kitchen drawer screw-drivers. My favorite Christmas gift from my dad was a socket wrench set.)
This post hurt my head.
Once, the girls on my floor of the dorms wanted to do a gift exchange. The girl who drew my name got me… a kitten calendar.
First off, who the hell ever WANTS a kitten calendar. Now, the fact that I worked with research cats may have led her to believe that I may have wanted it. However, all I ever did was bitch and moan about those freaking cats. Everyone else even looked confused when I opened it.
Way to go, for getting me a generic gift for eight-year old girls.
I wonder if she was thinking
while she was wrapping it up.
I do not understand not calling her on it. Your dad needs to know that he has a thief for a gf. Now, don’t call her that but explain to him that these are not real pearls…
At the very least, go to the gf and tell her that unless she rectifies it (or claims ignorance of) that you will be going to your dad.
I just do not understand keeping quiet about this.
A few years back when I still worked in retail, we managers did a Secret Santa exchange with a $15 budget amongs the five of us.
So what did my delightfully throughful colleague get me? A fancy wine bag. To be more specific, a fancy EMPTY wine bag. With a plastic Xmas ornament that looked suspiciously like the previous year’s store decorations.
Grrr.
(if anyone is wondering, I went slightly over budget and got Scroogey McTighwallet a Godiva coffee gift pack with four different coffee flavours, a holiday mug and chocolate biscotti… which I was sorely tempted to snatch back and take home for myself)
When I was traveling through Zurich, I brought some swiss chocolate back, and pretty much everyone on my list got some for Christmass, along with other gifts. 2-1/2 years later mom re-gifted me the same chocolate in the same wrapping paper for my Birthday. Thanks mom.
Most of the time, I’m pretty happy that someone thought about me. Sometimes, though, the bad gifts become the stuff of family legend…and I can’t help but laugh about them for years to come.
Take my mother, for instance. She grew up very poor and never had much experience in giving very many gifts.
One year, when redsister1 was in college, she asked for one of those blankets that snapped up, I think they were called a cuddle sack. Guess what I got for Christmas that year? So the next year, she again asks for a cuddle sack. Guess who got one again? A couple of years after she had graduated and moved to New Orleans, where, unlike the land of lake effects snow, one doesn’t need blankets that snap to sit at home watching tv, guess what she got for Christmas?
One year, she found these super-duper windshield wipers ( I think they were “As Seen on TV”) that would clear your car’s windshield of rain, snow, mud, bird doo, etc. Everybody got those for Christmas that year. The only thing, she must have found them in January or February…she bought them for the Grand Marquis that I had traded for an Escort in March.
Redsister1 has missed a couple of times herself in monumental ways too (although to be fair, she usually selects something pretty inoffensive, if a bit generic). One year, she mailed a gift to me packed in highly scented potpourri…my dad took me to the ER when the inhaler and the other drugs weren’t doing the trick for the asthma attack the stuff brought on. The book that was packed in it even had to go…
Today’s gift will indoubtably go down in family legend too. To me, her sister, a diabetic living alone (no one to share it with), she sent a Tower of Chocolate. And not the dime store stuff. And she’s a nurse!
The folks at work asked me to thank her for it.
When I was 9 years old I received an apple and an orange in one of my father’s socks. And a couple of books.
My parents separated that year and I was living with my father at his parents’ home. They were strict disciplinarians of the type who used to quote lovely proverbs to us kids such as ‘I want never gets’ and the classic ‘children should be seen and not heard’. Lovely people.