It was just one of those secret-Santa things that our study hall class decided to do in high school.
We ended up putting a $10 limit on the gift. I didn’t really want to do it, but ended up saying I would and I don’t know why. What made it worse was that the girl’s name that I drew also got my name.
She gave me this radio/walkman type of thing, and I gave her . . .
$10
I still cringe whenever I think about that one.
Ouch.
Well, this was a deliberately bad present. I was around 15 years old, and my friends and I had been invited to some guy’s party. I vaguely knew him, and the celebrations involved walking around the city and watching a movie (our own expense). This guy had a reputation for being tight and we suspected that we had been invited for present reasons only - a suspicion which grew when he requested cash in lieu of a gift.
So the worst present that I ever gave was a money tin about the size of a small bin with about $7 worth of 5c pieces inside. The best part was that while there was a slot to put money there was no way to get it out. Now I would just decline the invitation but back then, I had an evil little giggle imagining him trying to pry the money out with tweezers or cutting the tin open.
An office ‘secret Santa’ scheme, where you all bought a present and put them together, and “lucky dipped” your own present back out.
Bought a box of chokkies to play safe, and the girl on the diet chose them (hmmm… perhaps on purpose?? the shape of the box must have given her a clue).
A good friend of mine once went on a year long sans sex slump. The last time he had been to the pink was at a New Years Eve party the previous year.
For Christmas a couple of us chipped in, and bought about $40 of condoms and a bottle of KY Jelley. He still has the condoms, but the KY went to good use.
You know that Seinfeld episode where Jerry decides to give Elaine money for her birthday? Then she gets mad at him and says something like, “what are you, my uncle?”
I’ve tried and tried to just forget about this incident. Try as I might, when Christmas rolls around and gifts are being exchanged, I just remember that awful “present” and think “what am I, an uncle?”
I’m never going to live it down.
I’m actually trying to determine a purposefully awful gift to buy for someone right now. A coworker who sits near me has been a big ol’ raging tsunami of obnoxiousness for months. She’s constantly placing lengthy, dramatic phone calls, most of which involve her shrieking and/or whimpering at her husband, or her bank, or a client (!).
ALL day, EVERY day… “You never listen to me! Wah!”, and “I’m overdrawn? You’re lying! I didn’t spend that much! Maybe YOU took the money! Go to hell!”
And with Secret Santa coming up, I just MIGHT get lucky and draw her name…
No bad present story beats my friend Michaels.
In high school he’d just started dating a girl whom he didn’t know all that much about. For Christmas he’d given her a copy of Edward Gorey’s “The Gashlycrumb Tinies”, which is this illustrated alphabet primer – but just a bit darker (he was quite the goth back then).
It has passages like:
“A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs”
“B is for Basil, assaulted by Bears”
“C is for Clara who wasted Away”.
… what he didn’t know was that she had had a sister, Clara, who had recently died after a long, drawn-out battle of spinal meningitis.
Groan…
12 years old, just me and my mom in the family. She had been talking about how she needed to lose weight (not really) and so I decided to do the useful gift and gave her a box of diet candy.
She cried, she said “I must be so fat for you to give me this. etc.”
One of the worst I ever received was a secret Santa gift in the college dorm. Big party, I start to unwrap my (light in weight) gift while every one is watching . . . and uncover a Tampax box.
I looked up and said, “I’m going to kill the !@#$$ who thought this is a joke! Step forward right now, !#%% 'cause I'm going to kick your !@#% ass.”
Turns out it was Ann, who had used the only box she had available for her gift of a Christmas ornament, She thought I had securely glued the wrapping paper to the box so I would never know what kind of box it was.
Damn.