Reading this funny article (via Megan McArdle's blog) reminded me once again of the Worst Gift I got from my grandmother, I think when I was in junior high or high school:
She gave me a completely worn out grey fake-leather narrow belt a lot of sizes too large for me that she had added a few new holes to so that it could fit me, albeit with an extra foot or so of belt sticking out on the end.
It is almost impossible to fathom how this could have happened. Did she forget that it was my birthday to the point that she had to scavenge her own belongings to find something to give me? That's a pretty common scenario where she's concerned. But putting the new holes in it took time and effort and would not have been as easy as just giving me an extra can of peanuts that she had sitting in her kitchen...which was, by the way, her most common gift to my dad, when she wasn't giving him an open can of tennis balls, all of which were totally flat, that she clearly picked up from her own garage where they had been sitting for a decade, or a Christmas-themed plastic-fake-stained-glass suncatcher with the 25 cent price tag still on it. (This is bad enough in itself, but it was a birthday gift for an early January birthday, clearly purchased at a post-Christmas sale.) So I can only imagine that she for whatever reason was done with this belt herself but thought that I would somehow want it or use it. Was it too small for her, so she was handing it down? Any normal person would recognize that it should have been discarded about 5 years earlier, but she infamously keeps things forever, no matter how crappy they get, if it will save her a dime.
Of course, this is the same woman who once gave my mom an entirely ancient bathing suit one season when my mom didn't have one and then years later asked for it back. I should be happy that she didn't ask for the belt back, since I got rid of it right away.
What's the worst gift you ever received, that was given with full sincerity? What's the worst/best joke gift you have ever received?
2 comments:
I finally got around to reading that link. Funny.
My favorite bad gift-giving I witnessed was at a party where all the gifts were joke gifts (well, all the gifts given the first round, then there was a second round). And my favorite joke gift was the family Bible which someone had found in a back room and wrapped up.
I can't remember having gotten a gift bad enough to have comedic value, unfortunately.
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