My sister rang me earlier to ask for advice on expensive gifts she was planning to buy for our parents’ anniversary. This is unusual; I don’t recall her asking for gifting advice before. I offered to chip in but urged caution, on the grounds that we’re already doing something special for them (and by “we” I mean she suggested it and did all of the organisation and I said that it sounded like a good idea and will be showing up on the day) this may be over-egging the pudding. She was going to have a think and call back, but didn’t.
I didn’t say anything about the guitar that she bought me for my birthday, which was an amazingly thoughtful and generous gift and utterly misconceived. Currently it sits propped up against an armchair with me fully intending to have another go at playing it with my useless, clumsy ham-fists. And so I know that receiving an amazingly generous gift that you don’t really want is quite awkward, and I’m not completely certain that these gifts will be as appreciated as they might be given the expense, hence the caution.
(She said something about the need to get them something so that they’d always have it to mark the day. And I know her intentions are good, but this doesn’t seem quite right to me for some reason - if something’s that significant then I’m not sure you need a trinket to say so. It all sounds a bit contrived and marketing-ey.)
I don’t quite get this instinct to lavish gifts on people. I hate buying presents anyway - getting the wrong thing is amazingly easy to do, and I’m quite good at spotting disappointment in people (it’s number 3 in the Life Skills Developed Through Internet Dating manual) so can’t be happy when I know people aren’t chuffed with what I’ve bought them. I don’t ask of anything in particular in return, and have long since stopped being concerned that mine is the smallest pile of gifts on Christmas morning, so I think that’s fair enough.
