Gift-giving failures

[Malthus]

It is that time of year again ... to relate your favorite stories of terrible gifts.
...

For my own entry, I have two - both gifts given by my mom to my wife.

1. When we were first married, my mom gave my wife for her birthday present ... a mop. It was admittedly a very nice mop, but the unstated message caused a certain amount of resentment on my wife's part ...

2. When we had the kid, my wife got a present from my mom - a baby hat that said "CHICK MAGNET" on it. As it turned out, my mom had no idea what that meant.

[Darth Wagtaros]

It is that time of year again ... to relate your favorite stories of terrible gifts.
...

For my own entry, I have two - both gifts given by my mom to my wife.

1. When we were first married, my mom gave my wife for her birthday present ... a mop. It was admittedly a very nice mop, but the unstated message caused a certain amount of resentment on my wife's part ...

Meow!

[Martinus]

Wow, and I thought my mother was vicious and hated my boyfriend. 

[crazy canuck]

Is it fair that Malthus wins the thread in the OP?

[derspiess]

I got my parents one of those Roku streaming boxes when they first came out.  They were all into Netflix by mail and Dad had streamed a couple movies on his computer.  And they loved using Time Warner's movies on demand, just didn't like the selection.

I set up the device for them and showed them how easy it was to pull up a movie.  They just did not get the concept.  Not one bit.  Three weeks later I saw the box with cords and everything boxed up and sitting on one of the basement steps, ready to put in basement storage

[The Brain]

I once gave a fuck.

[Malthus]

Wow, and I thought my mother was vicious and hated my boyfriend. 

The funny part is that they now get along all too well in some ways - they spend hours talking to each other on the phone.  No good can come of that.

[derspiess]

Christmas before last, my brother's mother in law gave him a gift card to a restaurant and that was the only thing she got him for both Christmas and his birthday (he has a December 26th birthday-- lucky him).  When he opened it and was about to say thanks, she sternly advised him that she intended for him to use the gift card to take his wife out to dinner for her birthday the following month.  So basically she was telling him he got nothing.

[CountDeMoney]

1. When we were first married, my mom gave my wife for her birthday present ... a mop. It was admittedly a very nice mop, but the unstated message caused a certain amount of resentment on my wife's part ...

Thing is, my mother would do something like that and be sincere about it, if only because her passive-aggressiveness is singularly surpassed by her obsessive-compulsive cleaning disorder.

Today is Monday: Kitchen Floor and Bathrooms Day.  The house still smells like vinegar upstairs.

[sbr]

I don't think I have told this story here before, but it is my favorite Christmas story ever so it is possible.

We (mom, dad, younger brother and myself) were in San Diego to have Christmas with my dad's parents; this was sometime back in the early to mid 80's.  I think I was in high school and my brother is 4 years younger than me, so let's say I was 16 and he was 12.  May dad's parents were very devout Catholics, but still had a very good and sometimes dirty sense of humor.  My dad was good friends with my grandmother's best friend Beverly, and they liked to tell dirty jokes and give each other gag gifts.

At this time my dad had come up with this silly system, where he would mark all of the Christmas gifts with a code; a number or letter or something.  He kept the list with him so he could tell the person giving out gifts who each gift was for and who it was from.  I never figured out why he bothered but it amused him, so whatever.

This Christmas morning my brother and I were sitting next to each other on the couch.  My brother got a gift that the code says was from Mom and Dad, so he opens it and quickly says 'check the list again'.  Dad says 'nope, to xxx from Mom and Dad'.  Brother says that it was definitely not for him and to check the stupid list again, and at the same time quietly opens the box to show me what it is.  It was a ~12" chocolate candy penis.

Dad insisted the list was right until brother handed the box to him, at which point all hell broke loose.  He realized it was for Beverly but now of course everyone had to know what was in the box to cause such embarrassment from my brother and himself.

I believe it is the last time he used a code for packages and we went back to writing actual names on the tags.

[alfred russel]

Is it fair that Malthus wins the thread in the OP?

I think sbr may have just knocked him from his perch. 

[alfred russel]

This doesn't match those stories, but when I was in high school my similarly aged cousin was going into surgery. I was looking at DVDs with my father so I could send her one for her recovery. I picked up "Pretty Woman". My father was "No no no, she won't like that movie, she is a sweet girl and that is about a prostitute. Get her Billy Elliot instead, that is a good move she will like."

I did not accept that she wouldn't like Pretty Woman because it had a prostitute, but my father had seen Billy Elliot and went on and on about what a good movie it was, and despite me thinking it looked like the worst film ever, insisted that it is much better than the box indicated.

I reluctantly deferred to my father's judgment, and bought Billy Elliot and sent it to her.

She then watched 5 minutes of the movie and all hell broke loose. She apparently could only imagine that I sent such an obviously terrible movie to her as a prank, while she was in the hospital recovering from surgery. Apparently her time in the hospital consisted of 50% complaining about pain and 50% complaining about me being an asshole. I couldn't explain myself because she lived in another city. For the next Christmas, she got me an electric dying rat (the stupidest gift ever, it probably cost $5). She would not accept my explanation.

So since she thinks of me as the villian for giving her Billy Elliot, I decided to embrace it. Now during holidays I've given her several Billy Elliott related gifts. She has received a Billy Elliot book, the Billy Elliot soundtrack, and the spanish language version of the Billy Elliot film. When she gets married, I'm going to find a way to make sure that Billy Elliot songs make their way into the reception.

[Ed Anger]

Bought my wife a treadmill after the birth of the twins.

[CountDeMoney]

Surprised it wasn't gravy.

[Eddie Teach]

My dad gave me a book titled "Does God Believe in Atheists". Of course, I've given him awesome gifts like a camo baseball cap, so I suppose it was partly deserved.