Understanding that there is no such thing as a truly bad gift, what’s the worst/silliest/weirdest gift you’ve ever gotten?
My favorite uncle when I was little bought me Yahtzee three years in a row. This was back when there was only one kind of Yahtzee, so we distributed them around the family for car trips and such. He was the nicest guy, he just honestly forgot from year to year, so nobody wanted to tell him and make him feel bad, but it was kind of hilarious just the same.
A.
I gave (not received) my sister a box of dehydrated H2O. Just add tap water and whoo hoo! She thought it was hilarious.
I gotthis from someone this year. I don’t know whether that qualifies as “worst,” “silliest,” “weirdest,” “most useless,” “most offensive,” or what.
I also gottwo spice racks of the sort that sit on the counter, when I have the world’s tiniest kitchen and literally only about three square feet of available counter space (horizontal space in my kitchen is at approximately the same premium as retail space in Ginza), a wine rack set that is attractive and for which I have absolutely no space/use (I cook with wine but I don’t really drink it), and a fake-fur throw that has microfibre on the back, looks like the pelt of a sasquatch, is dry-clean only *wince*, and smells like VOCs. I didreal well this Christmas.
A leather candle holder shaped like an elephant. Really.
I got a flashlight that has a compass on it that has wide latitude for where north is.
well, my unce gave me gas one year. (a card for mobil stations). but for truly sucks, it has to go to my step-monster when she had to buy me things. maybe it was before the marriage. i got several spelter ugly earring holders which i killed. luckily all contact with kim/tiffany has BLISSFULLY ended. others have to deal with them.
worst? easy enough: one year I got compost. No, really. As a kit.
best?
hard to say. This year was good though.
Interrobang: about that microfibre-backed fake-fur throw.
Put it in your dryer with a Febreeze sheet on air fluff (or whatever that no-heat setting is called now) for 30 minutes or so. Then fold it carefully, slip it into a pair of brown paper bags, and stow it in your car as an emergency blanket. Trust me.
my mother gave me a “massager” one year. one of the two headed kind. (the one that is supposed to be used on two orifices at the same time). SRSLY. I think it must have been on sale.
Hmmm, 8 years back, I opened a set of “CD-G”s…for Karaoke. I was puzzled until I opened the Karaoke machine. I don’t ‘do’ Karaoke and make no bones about wanting to do it – but the boyfriend that ditched me 6 months prior to that xmas LOVED it…mom thought I wanted one…!???!
The absolute ‘worst’ gift…3 years back, my then-boyfriend (that I was LIVING with?!?) didn’t even get me a card…let alone anything else. And yet he had no problem letting all the gifts I got him make him happy.
The best gift I could get right now, and should have told my family for this year…is the gift of them either SERIOUSLY/PERMANENTLY quitting smoking OR at LEAST – not smoke when I’m around. No cost to them…actually it would save them a hella amount of money on cigarettes alone. But they wouldn’t do it, I’d bet dollars to donuts.
I got, when I was 15-16 years old, the world’s frilliest sweatshirt, embroidered with elephants around the neckline – HUGE ones – and all in Christmas-y colors. Woulda been perfect for me when I was, say, nine, and if I weren’t Jewish.
Another terrible fashion choice made for me was the world’s tackiest housecoat, a polyester floor-length zebra stripe. Wore it to a tacky costume party and won it, hands down.
My husband got the most bewildering gift of the year award, however, when he received a tall vase that looks exactly like a limb from a tree. Log, log, it’s better than bad, it’s good…
It rolls down stairs, alone or in pairs…log vase is a nice present.
I got a collectible Mr. Potato Head this year. I live in a tiny studio apartment with no shelves! Where am I supposed to put it? And if I take that fucker out of his case I just know I’m going to lose the extra mustache and nose and ears. I can’t get away from the thing in my tiny space. Khan had a healthier relationship with Captain Kirk than I have with this doll. I’m definitely regifting it to my sister for her birthday in February.
A Pachinko game. Got the 8-inch-long box of metal balls first. Opened it, looked at in complete puzzlement, then put it aside. After the last gift was opened, I was told to look behind the chair I was sitting in. There was the game board thing.
The worst? Boxes of stale, partially melted ribbon hard candy my great aunt would dig out of her attic each year. I hate hard candy. Old, heat-melted hard candy REALY sucks.
The best? My Schwinn Corvette bike, Christmas 1957. Three-speed, caliper brakes, chrome fenders and headlight. Loved that bike, even if it took a few tumbles to get the hang of using (or not using) the front caliper brakes.
worst: an empty glass box the year I was 10. It turned out to be an aquarium, only there were no fish or anything else. Just the box. I’m still not sure what my mother was thinking…
best: my Westie. Mr. Stellans gave me a ‘gift certificate’ he made up himself for the dog of my choice in 1998, and I researched the crap out of which dog would suit us and our cats the best. Abbie won, and now she has a brother, Charlie. And the cats put up with them quite well, heh.
Our most hilarious wedding gift was a silver toilet paper cover. You mount it on the wall, put your toilet paper inside it, then pull the silver cover down so you don’t have to look at the toilet paper. I guess it was so you didn’t have to think about the indelicate use for which the object behind it was intended.
Well, I can’t think of anything that horrible (some of the stuff on this list is awe-inspiring), but my husband did get a hockey puck from his brother one year.
Worst: First Christmas with my first wife, Barry Mannilow’s Greatest Hits. Not the thing someone gives to a long haired dope smoking hippie.
Oddest: A great big feather thingie to put around your cowboy hat, of which I’ve never owned one.
Best: Christmas 1965 my parents gave me a red, 9 volt AM transistor radio. Started me on a life time long love of music. Without a doubt the bestest present ever.
Wierdest was a Mr. Potato head-like game my sister-in-law picked out for me shortly after she married my brother. I was about 23 years old at the time. After a week I stopped wondering what message she was sending me.
The best present I ever gave wasn’t for Christmas, it was my brother’s birthday.
I gave him a shopping cart.
His wife hated it so he took it to work.
We just got Monopoly City for Christmas and of course our 11 y.o. wanted to play right away. This new Monopoly has so many freaking rules it’s ridiculous, and brainiac 11 y.o. kept getting frustrated with his Mom for not being able to keep straight what it meant to have a sewage treatment plant or prison on your property vs. a school or wind farm.
A lesson for Parker Bros.: If it ain’t broke … don’t fuck it up!