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.