'Tis the season for remembering ridiculous gifts. Just brought home a giant rubber tree plant that was given to me. It is ridiculous but very appreciated. Reminded me of the Christmas about 20 years ago when I went to Texas with my then boyfriend to spend the holiday with his family.
His mother, who I realized too late was not thrilled that I was there*, gave me one of those Beta fish in a bowl with a plant in it that’s supposed to be a mini ecosystem. To take back with me to Chicago on a plane in January. I still laugh about having to keep that thing upright between my feet on the plane and then on the train.
Thinking about that reminded me of years before when my Grandma sent a gift wrapped package to my Mom around Thanksgiving. In the package was the sweater we had given her the year before for Christmas and a note. The note said that the sweater was much too warm and wearing it necessitated turning the thermostat below 80 (American). The note also included a short list of items she might enjoy receiving that Christmas. The last item was “no bulky sweaters”.
Just looking for some funny and light hearted stories of terrible gifts you’ve given or received.
*turns out she wasn’t really thrilled about even the idea of me. She is a lovely person and I finally won her over when her son and I parted ways
Family gift exchange many years ago. My siblings and I drew names and we had a price limit of $25. I spent about twice that for my recipient. I got a used t-shirt that was 2 sizes too small. My then SIL thought I would like it because it had a picture of a race car on it. It was a dragster, I had no interest in drag racing. It became a shop rag.
My mil gave me a 1.5 ft ceramic unicorn rocking horse music box when I was in my 40’s. I have no idea why. I think it was either a great sale or a regift.
Worse than that my sister-in-law gave my husband, me, my 10 year old son and 8 year old daughter the exact same extra large T-shirt with a cat on it. We are not extra large people and we don’t have cats. That was the last year I gave her a Llardro porcelain figurine (which she collected) or anything else. We just stopped doing Christmas with them and the rest of his family. The last nail in the coffin was when the nephew let slip that they had all celebrated Christmas with real presents the day before. Oops.
Eevry year I would get a call from my sister who would shop for my mom. I would always say dark sox, and no bright colored shirts. Every year the shirts would be hot pink, purple, or bright red and the sox would be white. I got to where I would just donate them the day after I got home.
Several years ago, my crazy uncle asked my then-3-year-old daughter what her favorite cereal was. My daughter told him that she likes Rice Krispies. Girl 2.0 will be 14 next month, and I expect that, like every birthday since she was 3, she will receive several boxes of Rice Krispies.
That’s not even the worst gift he’s ever given, though: One year, when the middle set of kids were ages 4 and 7, Crazy Uncle looked high and low, at every Walmart within driving distance (say, a radius of about 40 miles) for the coolest graphics on a store gift card. He finally settled on a holographic card for each of them - penguins, IIRC. Mind you, he didn’t actually put any money on the cards - the graphics were the entire goal, in his addled and weird mind!
I’ve posted this before, my Mother once gave me and my new bride a bunch of her obviously used sex manuals with page with turned down corners and passages that were highlighted. :eek:
Astonishingly, neither I or my new bride were particularly interested in what specific sex acts my Mom was in to.
One year my mother in law gave us an all expenses paid trip to Costa Rica!
Of course it was only for one of us, and we would have to “reimburse” her for the other ticket (i think it was $4k, probably what all four tickets actually cost), and buy our own airfare, and use an entire years worth of vacation time, and dump our kids…somewhere?.. and she was coming on the trip with us.
But it was a gift! She wasn’t just trying to recoup the cost of getting duped at a high pressure sales pitch during a “free” lunch. No, definitely not that!
Needless to say the trip never happened and she had real hard feelings over us being ungrateful.
The year I got engaged to my Beloved Butthead, he bought me 10 litter boxes for my birthday.
OK, like KRC, that’s what I asked for but I really did enjoy people’s reactions when I told them what my brand new fiancé gave me for my birthday
I do cat rescue. I’m not quiet about this, I have cat pics on my desk and usually have a cat calendar. People tend to give me cat related stuff, including the said calendars. One year my Secret Santa at work gave me a dog calendar. Yeah, that one got re-gifted.
The worst Christmas had to be the one where, for all intents and purposes, my mother forgot about me. I was in the Navy, so not living at home any more. When I came home on leave, she asked me to wrap a couple of scarves that were just-in-case gifts - in case someone showed up unexpectedly. I guess that was me, because when she realized what a tiny stack of boxes was in front of me, she added one of those scarves. Yeah, the gift of being forgotten by your mother is pretty sucky.
It’s just a little ‘stocking filler’ type present, but my mother regularly gives me some nice scented soap at Christmas.
What,'s wrong with that, I hear you ask? Well, nothing, except I have chronic eczema, and I can’t use soap. I’ve been using prescription soap-free alternatives since I was 16.
The outright weirdest present I’ve had though has to be the 10p plain plastic ruler my grandmother gave 15-year-old me and my 18 year old bro each one Christmas. She wasn’t exactly all there, at least she tried.
My first xmas after getting married my in laws gave me a sweater. It was a very nice, expensive sweater. But, I do not wear sweaters. I find them uncomfortable. Just thinking about sweaters right now is making me itchy. My in laws had never seen me wear a sweater. My wife offered to say something to her parents, but I told her to forget about it.
The next year, for xmas, it was another sweater. At that point I couldn’t say something without explaing why I hadn’t spoken up the year before. So the sweater, in its box, went into a cupboard with its friend. My wife wouldn’t let me donate the sweaters, because.
By the time sweater/xmas number ten happened, it had become a meme. For all I know, my ex still has all ten sweaters, unworn and in the original gift boxes.
It so happened that his Mom was intending to buy her Daughter a bracelet they while had seen one day while out shopping, that she had greatly admired.
Let me describe it for you. It was lovely gold, leopard(ish) cat with rubies for eyes. Her daughter being much into cats.
Three things conspired to land this under the tree with my name upon it.
When his Mom went back to purchase it she found it substantially reduced in price, and so, began to heavily pitch it to my husband, who always loves a bargain. 1 believe it had been reduced to $300, from $500, or something close to that.
I owned a cat at that time. And for his Mom, that was enough.
Hubby really struggles with gift giving. A lot.
And so, I own a hideous bracelet that I have never worn, not even once. Worse still I opened it in front of Hubby, Mother and sister. So there was nothing for it but to accept it graciously. Which I did.
Over the next couple of years, when asked why he never saw me wear it, I claimed it was so lovely I could only really wear it to something fancy.
The only saving grace in this is, hubby has a short memory and has likely forgotten it ever existed!
One year my mom sent (since I lived a continent away and was not coming home for the holidays, being broke) me a denim midi-skirt with lace at the bottom. It was the sort of thing that was in style at the time but first, I don’t wear skirts. Graduation from high school was the last time in my life, seriously, that I put one on. And second, if there is a woman in the world less likely to wear lace than me, I have not met them. I just sat there wondering if my mom had confused me with someone else. As an only child I would have thought she might have known me better.
My MIL seemed to give me either light blue velour bathrobes (3 years in a row) or small appliances (salad shooter, weird mixer-wand thingie, stand mixer, rotisserie.) I’m really not into light blue - I tend to choose items in the red/pink family - and I’m not all that tough on robes, so they all accumulated in my closet till 2 of the 3 went to goodwill. And of the appliances, the only one I use regularly is the rotisserie. The salad shooter was more trouble than it was worth - by the time I put it together, “shot” my veggies, then disassembled it and cleaned it, I could have chopped with a knife, rinsed it, and had time left over. I never used the mixer-wand thingie, and the stand mixer, while thoughtful, was not very good quality - the nylon gears stripped out way faster than they should have. Fortunately, that side of the family agreed to quit exchanging gifts except for silly tokens or white elephants.
My husband’s grandmother always gave us $5. I know once upon a time, that was like real money, and it was truly very sweet of her, but it felt kind of silly - we were both well-paid engineers and she was a widow on a tiny pension. Honestly, I felt guilty accepting it from her every year. She was such a sweetheart!
