Every Christmas season, I come up with what I think are unique and unusual gift ideas. And every Christmas season, I end up having to return a few
gifts before I even give them.
This Christmas season was no different.
You’d think I’d have learned my lesson from past disasters.
For example, there was the wood carving of a buffalo I had specially made one
Christmas for my husband, the buffalo collector. Unfortunately, the artist
never had carved a buffalo before, so the end result looked like something that
had been in some horrible, disfiguring accident.
Still, the artist was so proud of his work, I
couldn’t bring myself to offend him, so I ended up forking over a small fortune
for it…and then hid the buffalo in the back of the closet where, to this day,
it still remains. I doubt that even a nest of hungry termites would want
it...probably because they would be too busy pointing at it and laughing.
And then there was the round tablecloth I had a woman
crochet for my mother’s dining-room table. It looked beautiful and I was very
pleased with it. My mother also loved it, but when she put it on her table, we
discovered that the center of the tablecloth wouldn’t lie flat. We tried
stacking books on it, ironing it and starching it, but still the center
continued to rise as if it were part of Houdini’s magic act. We were tempted to
bring it outside and beat it down with a stick.
Another gift disaster occurred when I asked the glass blower
at a mall if he could make a tiny bowling pin and bowling-ball figurine for my
mother, who was an avid bowler and collected blown-glass items. He assured me
it would be no problem. A week later, the masterpiece was ready, so I rushed to
the mall, excited to see it. When the glass blower handed it to me, I just
silently stared at it, unable to speak. The bowling pin and ball looked exactly
like a turkey drumstick and a baked potato. I honestly thought it was a replica
of someone’s lunch.
And I’ll never forget the gift I bought for our friend who
collected pocket watches. The watch had wood trimming encircling the face and
came in a matching wooden case. I decided to have the back of the watch
engraved with, “TO BILL, CHRISTMAS 2005.”
A week before Christmas, I picked up the watch. The back
read, “TO BULL, CHRISTMAS 2005.”
I wasn’t quite as creative this past Christmas season,
however, which I felt was a much safer route to take. Still, ordering items
online had its own consequences.
There was the scrolled picture-frame I ordered for a
beautiful photo of a rose I’d bought months before. The frame arrived and was
perfect, but the glass in it was so thick and heavy, it was guaranteed to bend
any hook, nail or stick-up product anyone tried to hang it on, and inevitably would send the
frame crashing to the floor. I had visions of the person I was giving the picture
to lying in a pool of blood with a shard of glass sticking out of her jugular.
Also, the photo that came with the frame, a scene taken in
England, actually looked a lot better than my photo of the rose. So I removed
the glass and left the frame and photo the way they were. My friend loved them.
Another friend of mine, who is an artist, really likes a
certain brand of marking pens that cost about $7 per pen. I saw a set of four
online for $19, which was a bargain, so I ordered them for her. Two days later,
I received an email from the company.
“We have shipped your marking pens,” it said, “but the
plastic case they come in doesn’t have any product labels on it – they fell
off. And we don’t have any others.”
When I gave the pens to my friend, I could tell by her
expression that she thought they probably were $1 knock-offs of the original
markers.
And then there is my friend, Colleen, who loves cats, warm
socks and gardening. So I bought her a plant-growing kit and some socks with
little cats on them.
She bought me some socks with little cats and dogs on
them...and a plant-growing kit.
All I can say is great minds think alike.
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