The Secret of Gift Giving
There is a secret for giving gifts, but not everyone knows what it is. The bad news is that I am not going to offer it up in this post. However I will share a few thoughts/comments about giving gifts.
In many families there is one relative who is known for giving terrible gifts. That is the sort of thing that you never want to be accused of saying about another and it is definitely something that you don’t want to be said about you. But the reality is that most of us have received a gift that we found less than inspiring.
And though we tried to pretend to be grateful it was hard to smile and offer thanks for having received something that we just couldn’t believe we had gotten. One of these days I need to dedicate an entire post to this topic, but not now.
The thing about the secret to gift giving is that there really are multiple secrets to be aware. There is the secret to giving a gift to a spouse or significant other, there is the secret to trying to be the cool aunt/uncle/friend/parent and the secret to trying to make sure that other parents do not hate you.
Since I am a father I am going to share some tips for how to make sure that parents do not hate you. Believe it or not there are some relatively simple rules that you can follow.
- Don’t give gifts that make obnoxious noises. Sirens, beeps, whistles and screeches are bad. As a rule of thumb I reciprocate by providing the child of the gift giver with a drum set. Or if they are single I hire a marching band to visit them during the early morning hours on the weekend.
- Don’t give gifts that require 36 hours to assemble. It is not cool. The kid doesn’t like it and the parents definitely do not.
Those are the two primary ones. Obviously there are others. And just as obvious is the rule that if you dislike the parent and child you should give them a gift that is obnoxiously loud and requires a degree in engineering to assemble.
And there you have it my friends, a practical toolkit that you can use to your benefit.
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