Gift Giving Guy

I just re-digested a whole year of Reader’s Digest, a gift from my in-laws. Last year, the RD editors favored stories of gifts gone wrong, as seen in these five reader anecdotes.

January 2009: Submitted by Kay Przybille
I’ve always wanted a beautiful shawl to wear with my winter dresses. So when I opened the present from my sister Wanda and saw that it was a white-and-silver shawl, I squealed in delight.

“I love it!” I told Wanda that evening. “I wore it all morning.”

“You wore it?” she asked, smiling. “It’s a skirt for the Christmas tree.”

January 2009: Submitted by Ruth Williams
For the holidays one year, rather than send gifts, my friend decided to enclose checks in her greeting cards. Inside each card she wrote “Buy your own presents” and then sent them off.

A few months later, she discovered the checks she’d “mailed” under a pile of books.

March 2009: Submitted by Susanna Wolk
Dad got an iPod Nano as a gift. He thought it was a tie clip.

May 2009: Submitted by Jamie Carlson

The knit cap my friend sent me from England was a bit small. But it was lovely, so I wore it to church that Sunday. Afterward, I e-mailed her to say how nice it looked on me.

She shot me back a note saying how glad she was. “Especially,” she wrote, “since it’s a tea cozy.”

October 2009: Submitted by Heather Boyd
Last Valentine’s Day, I arrived at the doctor’s office where I work as a receptionist to find a mystery man pacing up and down holding a package. As I got out of the car, he declared warmly, “I have something for you.” I excitedly ripped open the bundle. It was a urine sample.