bad gifts

  • Posted on
  • by

When Dorkass and I first became friends, my First Alert Obligation Detector shrieked loudly. If ever there were a person who...

  1. would want to exchange birthday and Christmas gifts and who
  2. doesn't possess the consideration to eventually fade out of your life and thus end the obligation
...Dorkass is that person. After accruing these people early on in life, one year I took a look at my lengthy Christmas shopping list and bolted 2000 miles to Seattle, never to return. I'll be damned if I moved here just to accrue more of these folks. Moving to Hawaii would be expensive.

No, to receive even one such gift from Dorkass would mean a hundred gifts, lifetime.

"No gifts!" I told my new friend. This annoyed her, but the subsequent savings have meant more to me than any cow-themed oven mitt ever could.

cow_oven_mitt.jpgAnd thus have I kept the number of gift obligations to a minimum. In the absence of a girlfriend, I'm presently at three. This is a good number. It also means that I only receive three gifts, which you would think is a downside, but not really. Why? Because people's obligatory gifts tend to suck. Mightily. Sometimes they even manage to suck and blow at the same time. And I don't miss that.

Specifically, I don't miss the following feeling. A young friend was in love with a douchebag who had a two-year old kid. I thought long and hard about what to get her for Christmas, finally settling on something supportively family-themed and potentially cost-saving. I bought her a luxury picnic basket, replete with plates, silverware, crystalware, etc. I gave it to her. She accepted. And then she gave me my Rubik's Cube.

This was in 2000. You remember the year 2000, when Rubik's Cubes had already been at dollar stores for 15 years?

Now what bothered me wasn't the disparity in cost. I knew she couldn't afford much. What bothered me was the disparity in thought. What about me suggests to her that I would want a Rubik's Cube? I wondered, eventually coming up with no answer that wasn't "she felt obligated to get me a gift and grabbed the object nearest the cash register at the thrift store." I came to look at this gift as a monument to how little she cared about me. Seriously, a fucking Rubik's Cube? Were they out of "We Are the World" 45s and "Happy New Year 1993" cards?

I've received many such monuments in my lifetime, and let me tell you, I'd rather have no gift at all. I'm accustomed to getting no gift at all. I wouldn't even think about it. But when I'm engaged to your daughter and you shove a plastic freezable Frosty Mug that I know you bought in bulk at Costco and gave to the mailman and paperboy, too, into my hand—well, I guess I know where I stand.

• • •

In recent years, the mommy years, I've asked my gift-exchange people for a date. I just want to hang out like we used to, once or twice a year. This is the best gift imaginable. Makes me wish Christmas came once a month.

• • •

For my money, a gift that's not from the heart isn't worth giving or receiving. This is why I declare "no gifts!" to new friends. And it's why I surprise them with gifts bought not because of a holiday obligation, but simply because I wanted them to have it.

No more monuments to how little someone cares about me, thanks. How about you? Think I'm an asshole? What's the worst such monument you've ever gotten?