Monday, December 20, 2010

You Really Shouldn't Have . . . by Diane Kelly

Finding the perfect Christmas gift can be difficult. I understand that. But when my daughter asked if I might like a pair of Spanx (the modern-day spandex girdle) for Christmas, it was all I could do to keep from choking the skinny teenaged twit. She thought the idea was hysterical. Let’s see if she’s still laughing when she finds her stocking full of cat box scoopings on Christmas morning. Then again, perhaps I’d asked for it when I complained about the roll of fat that has formed around my hips and belly since I turned forty awhile back. That’s the last time I’ll vent my insecurities to anyone with less than 10% body fat.

We’ve received some ill-fitting gifts over the years, and, no, I don’t just mean tacky Christmas sweaters. Back when my husband was working his way through his post-doctoral fellowship for slave wages (after working his way through graduate school at sub-slave wages), a family member gave us a lava lamp for Christmas. Now I’ve got nothing against lava lamps. In fact, we still have the lava lamp and it adds a touch of fun to the upstairs game room. Problem was, at the time we received it, we were living in southern California with two small children and an income that put us well below the poverty line. When you’re existing on a steady diet of reduced-for-quick-sale peanut butter and three-for-a-dollar boxes of mac-n-cheese, a lava lamp is about the last thing you need. We couldn’t even afford the electricity to run the thing. At that time, we also received an eighty-dollar bottle of Courvoisier cognac from another family member who is a wine and spirits connoisseur. When you’re breastfeeding a baby, alcohol isn’t exactly recommended, though on those nights when my son wouldn’t sleep I was sorely tempted. It’s not that the lava lamp and cognac were bad gifts, it’s just that the timing was off. These days, I’d love to get schnockered on high-dollar alcohol and watch gelatinous orange blogs float up and down inside a glowing lava lamp. But then? A month’s supply of diapers or baby formula would’ve come in handy. But I can’t blame the givers. They were at much different points in their lives than we were. Chances are they weren’t too thrilled by the economy-size boxes of off-brand laundry detergent we gave everyone that year, either.

Whatever is on your wish list this Christmas, I hope you get it! And if you’d love to share some of your less-than-perfect gifts, we’d love to hear about them. We promise we won’t tell.

6 comments:

Zita said...

My sister and I have really different tastes in clothes. For a while she insisted on buying me blouses and sweaters for Christmas. One year that stands out vividly she bought me a blouse that was the most hideous thing I had ever seen. She was so excited for me to open it and thought it would be perfect for me to wear to work. It was also the first time I ever returned a gift from her. I had to tell her that I would never wear it and could we please go exchange it. I felt awful for rejecting her present, but having it hang unworn in my closet for the next 5 years was kinda pointless, you know? At least she has now stopped buying clothes for me. =)

krisgils33 said...

I try to always give good gifts and I do think I succeed, but who really knows? This year, I asked for dryer balls and a loofah. Seriously. That's all I need! Last year I got a Kindle and some other gagety things, so it all balances out. My biggest accomplishment was finally getting my mother to agree that it was totally pointless for me to send her a check for $100 and for her to send me a check for $100. That's the price limit, and neither of us wants anything. This has been going on for years, but she always wants to go through the effort. For me, it's a far greater gift to not have to go to the bank to deposit the check!!

Tori Lennox said...

My parents always ask what I want for Christmas. But it took a long time after I became an adult for them to actually get me something I wanted. I finally broke down and said "if you can't find what I asked for, please don't try to substitute for something you THINK I might want". Because it never was anything I wanted. LOL!

Diane Kelly said...

Thanks for stopping by! Sounds like finding the perfect gift is a widespread problem. : ) I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!

Christie Craig said...

Hmm,

I've gotten a toilet brush, Diane. Hubby thought he was being funny.

This year, hubby has done very well. I picked it all out.

Merry Christmas.

CC

Shel said...

I once got a can of Aquanet hairspray and a huge thing of peanuts from my Dad...