Melted chocolate, broken down VW vans, and cemetery plots. People have sure gotten some sad gifts over the years and here they are to tell the story of the worst they ever received.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
A Gift He Will Never Forget
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I open the package again, move some soft paper material away and pull out this patch that reads ‘BIG O DONOR’ in red. I just stared at the patch and didn’t know what it was for until I saw that I had missed two safety pins that had fallen by my feet on my carpet floor. I put this all together and concluded that my uncle had given me the patch and pins so that I could fasten them to my beanie so that I could walk around town wearing a beanie that says ‘BIG O DONOR.’
It was just such an example of his illness and bizarre nature that it makes me sad thinking about it.
He died all alone out in the middle of nowhere and the only memory that I really have of him is listening to him speak fervently with a stutter in my dining room at Easter or Christmas and of this hat that he gave me before he decided that he didn’t want to stick around anymore. It might not seem like that weird of a gift, but when I consider who gave it to me and how he must have really thought that it was something that I would enjoy, it makes me feel sad and depressed to think about what must have gone on in his head in his tiny place all of the years out in the mountains before he blew his head off.
At his funeral, it was only his immediate family and there were no friends or anyone else there outside of us. It was obviously a closed casket and the whole affair was just depressing for me to go through. I had to devote hours on that day to think about him, yet I couldn’t come up with much to think about because I never really knew him. The only thoughts of him that I could muster that day were of the faint memories of him and my dining room table during his rare holiday visits and of the Big O Beanie that he had left for me before he ended his life.”
This Uncle Gets To The Point In The Meanest Way Possible
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“When I was 15, I weighed like 185 pounds (I’m a short guy, 5’3 at the time), and had a huge, manly bosoms. I received a bra as a Christmas gift from an uncle…”
Here’s Your Gift, We’ll Take It Now
“For my 19th birthday, I was living in a dorm and living up to the ‘starving college student’ persona. My parents generously got me a $100 gift card so I could afford groceries, along with a supermarket rewards card.
Then they went grocery shopping and took my gift card. So for my 19th birthday, I got a Shoprite loyalty card.”
Money Was Tight For A Sad Reason
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“One year money was tight, real tight. I was in my mid-teens when my mum took me aside and explained that I would not be receiving a birthday present that year. My inner child screamed, but me wanting to show how much of a man I had grown to be just nodded and smiled and thanked my mum anyway. The day came, and as forwarned there was no present. It hurt but I was determined to be a man about it. 2 days later I was in the kitchen and I noticed a shopping bag on the bench. Being a curious person I had a look to see what was inside. Inside that bag the largest amount of pot I had ever seen in one place. I knew Mum and her boyfriend smoked it. Eff you, Mum.”
Torture Is Not A Gift
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“My first ‘real’ relationship – in the sense that it involved mutual mushing-together of naughty bits – began when I was 16 years old. It lasted for two and a half years, which I’ve been told is fairly impressive for a couple in high school. Truth be told, that span of time is most notable when you consider the fact that the young woman and I were almost completely incompatible. That was never more evident than when she tried to give me gifts.
During our first Christmas together, my then-girlfriend gave me a pair of hand weights, the sort that might be held by a jogger wearing leggings. They had clearly been purchased from the bargain bin at the local thrift store, but I told myself it was the thought that mattered (even if I wasn’t sure that any thought had gone into the gift at all). Besides, we had only been dating for about three months, and it was probably unfair of me to expect anything at all.
Unfortunately, that would set the stage for every gift I’d receive from the girl.
I need to pause for a moment and explain something about this young woman. Although she was ambitious and talented, she had almost zero patience for practice or preparation.
For my eighteenth birthday, this young woman – who was also, I should mention, completely tone-deaf – forced me to sit in a plastic folding chair for as long as it took her to ‘sing’ her way through three love songs by Elvis Presley. I hated Elvis at the time and watching this girl attempt (and fail) to mumble her way through ‘Love Me Tender’ was as close to torture as I’d been through.
Worse still, I had to sit back and pretend that I enjoyed it… because as she’d told me, she’d worked really hard on it.”