Judy's Blog OFF MY NOODLE

Bad Gifts and the Women Who Regift Them

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My eco-friendly intentions have just blown up like a bad science experiment, leaving me to clean up the mess. It all started when I began organizing a closet and pulled out a dusty old wedding present, still in the original box. I had never used this quaint-looking bowl, choked with dainty flowers all around, and have no idea why I allowed this tacky thing to follow us through three moves in 20 years. My style-conscious daughter took one look at it, rolled her eyes in a 360 degree circuit and said, “That is like, so old-fashioned! Looks like something Great-Aunt Betty would have in her house.”

Bingo! This was exactly Great-Aunt Betty’s taste, and with her 80thth birthday approaching, I felt it a stroke of genius to regift one musty old relic to someone of similar vintage. But my pride in “going green” and saving green at the same time boomeranged, hitting me in a woman’s most sensitive spot - her ego. I shipped the bowl off and promptly forgot about it. Two weeks later, that increasingly rare artifact arrived in the mail: a hand-written letter. This “thank you” from Great-Aunt Betty was uncharacteristically snarky, and asked what sort of chutzpah I had by returning the wedding gift she had given to me with love and consideration more than two decades back! Hadn’t she endured enough insults from her own children over the years? My hands shook as I read her still-elegant penwomanship. I hadn’t been that mortified since the day I forgot that I had a thick green sea kelp exfoliating mask on my face and opened the door to sign for a package from UPS. 

In my defense, it is a well known fact (isn’t it?) that motherhood can vaporize zillions of brain cells. But I’m not sure this excuse alone will heal the wounds. In Japan people who have brought this degree of shame on themselves used to fall on their swords. Fortunately, this is not a widely practiced form of repentance here in Los Angeles, where “repentance” usually comes in the form of making an appointment to remove tattoos that say “Melanie & Speed Forever.” Even if I were willing to dabble in a bit of self-flagellation (which really is not a Jewish thing) to prove the depths of my shame, who would be left to set up everyone’s doctor and dentist appointments, sweep the floors, walk the dog, beg the plumber to come back, comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and, oh heck, don’t get me started about all the other things I do around here. 

I should have known better. After all, stories of regifting bloopers are legion. A friend of mine was once given a gift card for Target for $50.00, but when she went to redeem it, it had only $12.09 cents left. Another friend received a food processor as a wedding gift, with the “bonus” of bits of dried food in the bottom of the bowl. If these stories hadn’t been enough to scare me straight, I was once the victim of a cruel form of regifting myself. One year, my friend Paula gave me a jade elephant pendant for my birthday. I feigned absolute delight, but Paula had made a classic rookie error among regifters: she failed to remove the original gift card still lurking in the box. Her face turned every shade of crimson and a few of green when I lifted the card that read, “To Paula, Love always, Mom.” I think it served her right for giving me a pendant with the likeness of the world’s fattest, most wrinkled mammal. Was I supposed to feel stylish and sleek with a bulky pachyderm around my neck?   

Fortunately, my friendship with Paula withstood the elephant regifting debacle, and I hope the same will hold true for my fumble with Aunt Betty, a good woman who read me stories as a child and who deserved better. Maybe I’ll send her a picture of me falling on a big plastic sword, along with a note of apology and a brand new gift. I hope she’ll laugh and forgive me. Won’t you, Aunt Betty?