The Cheapest Gift You Have Ever Received

[Medusa]

I always put alot of thought into my gifts so its quite dissapointing when you open a gift knowing there is no thought behind it.

That says it all. I shop w/the person in mind but I get gifts that people buy after Xmas and they save it til the next year, then think "Hmmm, who should I give this to?". And it's usually something like a mismatched set of Xmas hand towels or one Xmas oven mitt. My son, on the other hand, gives me fantastic gifts that he's put a lot of thought into. He learned from me.

[Karen]

I remembered a couple cheap gifts. I once got a little jar of honey so old it had crystalized, and another year just a small pad of paper with a postage-stamp design on the front, and another year a old-looking jar of jelly. These did not upset me in the least bit. Why?

Because the giver was a dear, dear sweet elderly friend of mine. She had beome diabetic, so couldn't have those sweet things, so passed them along to someone who could enjoy them. The little pad of notepaper I knew she got from the postman, but she wrote a sweet note on the first page. I still have it. She was the sweetest, nicest person, never learned to drive, lived by herself, as her daughters had long-since grown and moved away, and her husband had died when the daughters were small. She was in her late eighties, and pretty fragile. She felt she HAD to give me a present, because I gave her rides to and from church, even though I passed right by her neighborhood on my normal trip.

So yes, she gave me the cheapest gifts I've gotten, but not the most thoughtless by any means. And I still resent that her daughter, who came out when Eva died, decided not to have a funeral service - just because the daughetr didn't know Eva's friends didn't mean we didn't exist, and we would have like a service to remember and celebrate her life.

[caseysmom]

Karen that is so sad. I am glad she had you and you appreciated her, it sounds like her daughters forgot all about her.

[Medusa]

Cheap doesn't always mean thoughtless, true. I received gifts like that, too. When I moved into my house years ago, there was a drought and I so badly wanted to plant flowers. My senior friend lived right on the canal and she brought me an entire pickup truck full of gallon jugs of water so that I could water my flowers. It didn't cost her a penny but it sure was a labor of love. Filling all those jugs was no easy task. I miss her so much.

[jackie]

My ex's mother gave me a bottle of perfume that was so old it had gone rancid.