In the Jones family household we celebrate the holiday season by exchanging Christmas gifts. But whatever your holiday preference/tradition/celebration, I believe you will be able to relate to the gift giving experiences I am about to convey.
Gifts come in several different categories, ranging from the extremely thoughtful and sentimental to the awkward and laughable.
An awkward gift is one that, after you have opened it, you wish you could hit a rewind button and never show up at the party. These gifts are usually classified as "I can't believe I thought that was a good idea"/"What the hell were they thinking" gifts. Some items that fall into this category are joke gifts that end up being personal -- for example, giving a friend a nose hair trimmer as a joke only to discover, as they are in the process of unwrapping the gift, that they do indeed have a problem with dense or long nose hairs. You might be thinking "Nose hairs? That is a weird example," but I challenge you to think of something offensive that is both politically correct and not hurtful to a friend who may read your column.
Some gifts are not meant to be awkward, but they are just given with poor timing. An example of this is the thoughtful collar for the dog of your best friend from home. You picked out one with nice fish designs on it, reminiscent of that time you went fishing together. Your friend opens it and tears spring to her eyes. Colonel Fluffy died three months ago, but your friend is "sure that they can use it for something else." You feel like a jerk because (a) you vaguely remember you were playing a video game one time when your friend was crying to you on the phone (you just assumed it was the usual problems) and (b) ... well, reason a is enough to feel like a creepster.
Note: "creepster" is a new and creepier version of the word creep that I am trying to get off the ground. It has a nicer connotation than the regular "creep" however. A man in a trench coat with dark hair and a sallow completion would be a creep, but a person who puts ants on your bed and then laughs at you would be a creepster.
My little sister used to make gifts for my parents. Unlike her talented, artistic and practical older sister, she did not construct the usual popsicle stick picture frame magnets. She took homemade gifts to the extreme by making purses. I say purses because this endeavor happened two years in a row. The first purse consisted of a piece of yarn attached to the cut-out toe of a sock. Maybe she felt uncomfortable that the toe of the sock was not large enough to hold my mom's checkbook, lipstick, altoids, etc, because the next year she created a much larger purse.
In this larger purse, the yarn still acted as the strap, but in place of the sock was a nice pair of undies. She (merely eight years old at the time) had the foresight to sew pieces of cloth over the leg holes so as to prevent losing things, and she even decorated the exterior with buttons. Before you think this is cute and creative let me just state two things: (a) the Jones family does not keep new underwear lying around and (b) one person (who shall remain nameless) in my family found a pair of underwear missing one week earlier. Hmmm...
For those of you looking to buy the perfect gift this year, ask yourself these questions before committing to a purchase:
Will it make the person cry?
If his/her grandma came along with them, would I need a back-up gift?
Will this physically harm the person?
Am I insulting his/her intelligence, appearance or emotional instability with this gift?
If you answer "yes" to two or more of these, consider buying an alternative gift ... or just make a purse (or a satchel for a man) made out of undergarments.
And for any of you out there looking to get me a gift this holiday season, I like diamonds ... and unicorns.
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