Bad Gifts: Redux

Holy Wrong-Size-Lingerie, Batman! That last post was near-and-dear to many! I’ve gotten several emails from folks telling me tales of gift-giving-gone-awry that make my venus fly traps look like the Hope diamond. And apparently I’m not the only one to have a horrendous gift prompt a sort of revelation about the relationship.
I had to share a few snippets of these stories with certain names, details, and other information deleted to protect the gift receivers. (The givers will get their comeuppance- karma is a beeyatch and whatnot.)

Here are some of my favorite quotes regarding these gifts and the relationship changes they prompted:

“A man who brings PBR to his first dinner with my parents will not have a second dinner with my parents.”

“An IOU coupon for sex should not have an expiration date… and should have clear terms for when it will and will not be honored, especially if the terms are NEVER.”

“Giving my daughter a ton of clothes loses something when you announce to the entire family that you bought them because you know I never do laundry…”

“He gave me a Valentine’s card in Spanish- a language I don’t speak. He thought it was funny. I’m not sure if it was funny because I DON’T SPEAK SPANISH.” *Editor’s note- my dumbass ex did this too- WTF???

And my favorite….

“Enlightenment had come in the form of a 9” hot pink plastic dick.”

Yes, you read that right. I’m still laughing.

And I’ll add a sad gift story to this lot…
Early in our relationship, the ex bought me a long-handled ice scraper. I was touched because he was so thoughtful, you know… realizing I was too short to reach the center of the windshield with a regular ice scraper. For years, I held that ice scraper up in my head and to others as a sign of how the ex as really quite thoughtful, just a practical salt-of-the-Earth (as he liked to call himself) kind of guy.
As our marriage wound down, I realized I didn’t have much, if any, evidence to add to that ice scraper… after almost 9 ½ years. I’d been holding on to that one thing for way longer than it was worth.
Even worse was when I shared that revelation with my Girlfriends and one of them offered up this moment of alcohol-induced honesty:
“He didn’t get you that because he was being thoughtful… if he was REALLY being thoughtful, he would have gotten his pathetic self out there and scraped the windshield himself. He was just making sure you could do it and his lazy ass wouldn’t have to!”

Shit.

Told you I was missing certain skills of deduction.

Ah, young love…