Family Gifts

Typically we have to open my parent's gifts to us weeks prior to Christmas so as not to ruin the day of Christmas for me or my wife. Usually the crap they foist on us as Christmas presents gets either my wife or myself absolutely pissed off about the lack of thought and/or the cheapness associated with the gifts. For example, one fine Christmas we openned a lovely gift of a dirty t-shirt with sparkly cats on it that smelled like cigar smoke and a green vinyl table cloth that also smelled heavily of cigar smoke. Both of these fine items made it to the dumpster immediately after openning. More often then not we use their crappy gifts as some form of white elephant gift in one of our work related holiday gift exchanges.

This year, however, was oddly different. My parents actually got us a fairly nice gift. It is so appropriate that I am actually a little un-happy about openning it prior to Christmas morning. Turns out that they actually put a bit of thought behind this particular gift and that this gift will actually be useful in the long run for my family.

Now, the gift that they got my little boy, their grandson, was nothing to be envied by anyone, but that is a different matter all together. That gift's crappiness is a direct result of my mom's propensity to shop at Dollar General, The Dollar Store, The Dollar Tree, Crap for a Buck, Two Bits Four Bits Six Bits Crappola, etc... Now, I do not want to come off seeming like I think that my little one deserves expensive gifts from my parents and that something that is not made of gold with ivory inlays is clearly beneath his worthiness. What I am saying is that the "Look, here's something for a dollar, and I happen to have a dollar on me" mentality should not be the decision making process for finding a gift for a loved one. Cheap is not bad. Lack of thoughtfulness (thoughtlessnessocity) is bad.

This general cheapness and her general lack of awareness of age appropriate gifts is really how her gift choices tend to suck. When little man is trying to figure out the DVD player, 4 3 page soft crib toy books is not a good gift. This year's gift would have been good for last year, but now the gift is clearly too young for him to be interested in it.

I also do not want everyone out there in cyberland to think that I am just beating up on my mom for her gift choice, Dad doesn't even help her out, so the bruden of gifting rests with her alone. He is also culpable in the crappy gift giving due to his lack of activity.

So for this year... one out of two ain't bad.