The Worst Gift I Ever Got

Start talking about presents this time of year and the ghosts of bad presents past haunt everyone whether they’re Scrooge or Bob Cratchet. It always starts off with flashbacks to a time when you opened a gift that was a total miss and you wonder just what in your DNA made your husband believe that pink-handled tools were “made for you.” News flash—we really want you to hang the picture, not give us tools so that we can hang it ourselves. There’s also the present with a not so hidden meaning. My friend’s future mother-in-law gave her the Zone Diet book for Christmas, saying excitedly “whenever I need to lose a few pounds this is my go-to Bible for it!” Nice. I guess it’s a good thing they never got married. A lot of laughs came from presents that weren’t really for the recipient, but for the giver. Case in point, a friend received a Mexican cookbook even though her husband knew she was allergic to chilies. I also think that’s why a big television isn’t really a gift at all because it wasn’t me that wanted to watch the football game in HD—I was hoping for Sleepless in Seattle.


But the hardest gift to understand is the one where you can’t begin to imagine what they were thinking. I remember one year when I had dropped hint after hint about a CD I wanted from a particular artist. Imagine my surprise when I opened my present to find a country artist instead of the rock artist I had asked for. Thank goodness for gift receipts.

Still I appreciate the effort. Gift cards seem easy and I can understand the draw since the shipping often exceeds the cost of the gift, but there’s something special about knowing that someone tried. It’s sort of like a leap of faith. You take a shot that the recipient will agree that you have just anticipated a want or need they hadn’t identified on a list. When you’re right, it’s magic. But you have to take the chance that you’re going to crash and burn and actually pick out a present. That’s why the CD I mentioned earlier is still one of my favorite gifts. My husband explained that he picked it out because one of the songs just always made him think of me. Ah, magic.