Thursday was National Regifting Day, celebrating and encouraging recycling and reuse of old,
unwanted,
unloved, or otherwise extraneous
gifts and presents. The occasion got us
to wondering how common the practice is, anyway. Here in the Yahoo! Search Editorial
department, we have an annual white elephant gift exchange, but those "presents" are usually (and
intentionally) pretty lousy and we couldn't imagine our colleagues inflicting
them on anyone they actually liked.
Regardless, and (mostly) prepared for the answers, we asked our fellow
Yahoo!s to tell us about the best and
worst gifts they ever received.
Dave: The best
gift I ever got? Not even close. It's a plastic swing in the shape of a Heinz pickle. Bright green,
about 18 inches long and six inches in diameter, it has "Heinz" stamped right into both
sides of it, and chains on either end to hook it up to the playground set. The only drawback with it is, the plastic is so old and
fragile that if anyone ever tried to use it for its intended purpose -- that
is, to swing
-- it'd probably shatter into a million pieces. So it remains strictly a
display piece.
Probably the worst gift I ever got was a "Cuban"
cigar. I'm not really a cigar smoker (maybe one a year -- if that), but I was
in Russia and thought, "Well, if I'm ever going to smoke a genuine Cuban
cigar, this is the place to get it." An acquaintance got me one, and
even as I lit it up, I knew something was wrong. Rather than a divine
combination of fine Caribbean tobaccos, this one smelled -- and tasted --
like a combination of unwashed socks and damp cabbage. I fought my way through about half of
it before throwing in the towel.
Eugenia: The best
gift I have ever received from my parents was a Big Mouth Billy Bass.
Initially, I thought it was the worst gift ever, so I gave it away in a yard
sale the following year. I wish I had kept it because now I know that it
would have made me the most popular person at the Annual Yahoo! Search
Editorial White Elephant Party.
Ricky: My best gift was a Nintendo system with the red Zapper,
Power Pad, and two (not one, but two!) controllers.
Worst one I ever gave -- a "naked guys with balls
magnet set."
Suzi: I'm split
on the best and worst I've ever received or gifted. But I'm entirely smitten
with one white elephant I never managed to get: Octodog's Frankfurter Converter!
Of course, I spend time every year perfecting my "Present Face"
for those times when it comes in handy.
Mitzi: Okay, the
worst gift would have to be the year my sister and I desperately wanted Barbie dolls
and got something called a Debbie Dunbar doll instead -- purchased from the Fuller Brush man (if
you can remember that far back). I remember being perplexed and disappointed
(never having heard of the doll) and trying my best to act happy.
Best gift goes to the Creepy Crawler set (the old-school one that came with metal plates that
you learned to never touch when they were heated). It was my "Santa
pick" and I didn't think I had any chance of getting one. But I had a
great time cooking up spiders and centipedes to put around the house -- and
on my sister's bed.
Sebastian: My first year of teaching, a freshman who was Italian (like
me) was determined to make me a scarf. I insisted that she not do that, since
I felt there were certain boundary issues. But in Italian culture -- and just
about every other one -- teachers are considered to be almost a family
member. After all, teachers do take care of one's children six to
eight hours a day, and give them the tools to be adults. She demanded, in a
very Italian fashion, to know what color I wanted, so I gave in. I chose
burgundy, the unofficial color of my Venetian ancestors. I wear it to this
day. There is nothing like the class of your first year of teaching; it's
much like your first love, or your first year away from home. I'm glad I have
a memento, and glad there's Facebook, so I can keep in touch with the Rascals from '06.
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