Gift giving can be a difficult process it’s hard to know exactly what another person is going to appreciate. Sometimes the desire to get someone a good present results in giving a well meaning, but misguided gift. Here, people reveal the most misguided present they’ve ever pruchased – or recieved.
1/26. I bought my mom a book for Christmas. It was by an author I liked, and it was on sale, and for some reason I didn’t even bother to read what it was about. Turns out it’s about a woman who wanted to kill her mother.
2/26. My mom bought me all the unedited American Pie DVDs for Christmas one year because she liked the song and had no idea what the movies were about. We sat down to watch it together, and I was sweating bullets waiting for her reaction. Half way through the movie she yelled at the tv “What is this?!?”. I picked up all the DVDs and ran from the room saying “You bought them as a gift, can’t return them now!”
3/26. For Christmas in 1999 I received a calendar… for 1999.
4/26. I just learned that Fifty Shades of Grey is erotic fiction. My brother and I bought my grandma this book just a week ago, based on it’s position on the book charts, unaware of this horrific eventuality.
5/26. When I was kid and had started earning my first pocket money, I wanted to buy my mum and dad something nice. This was around 1995 and everybody really loved Boom Boom Boom by the Outhere Brothers. It was all over the telly, the radio, it was everywhere.
So I bought them the Outhere Brothers album. There was two versions, one had a ‘parental’ sticker on it. Which I thought was amazing, because it was for my parents. Perfect! (story continued on the next page…)
Continue onto the next page for more!
Anyway, they were really grateful and I got a hug and everything, but they never once played it. Which was a bit weird, because I knew they loved the song, and I’d bought it for them so it should have been special to them. But I never mentioned it.
It was at least another five years before I learned what the parental sticker really meant. And if you’re not familiar with the Outhere Brothers, here’s a few tracks from the album that I bought, as a child, for my parents: Orgasm. Golden Shower. That kind of stuff…
6/26. Bought a parrot once from a kind Englishman. Turns out the parrot (whom I even named ‘Polly’) was actually no longer alive. I had suspicions, but the shopkeeper insisted that the parrot was just resting, and I believed him and purchased it as a gift for my wife.
Honey, I know you were not pleased with this gift. Forgive!
[deleted]
7/26. When I was a freshman in high school my very conservative aunt bought me a backpack with a pretty leaf on it. I was also very sheltered, so I wore it for about a month until my friends told me it was a pot leaf.
8/26. When I was 8 my grandmother bought me a copy of “Silence of the Lambs”. We can only assume her thought process was Lambs = kid movie. I remember unwrapping it and looking at it for half a second before my mom snatched it away, never to be seen again.
9/26. My sweet grandma in her awesome grandma-ness overheard me telling my dad that I could never find my flashlight when I needed it. So my sweet grams goes on the search for the perfect flashlight for her 20 year old grandson. She asks my older brother for help in her quest. Him being the older brother, decides to pull a bit of a prank and tells her that he will buy it, wrap it and get it for her since he lives in the city and she doesn’t. Well come Christmas morning (story continued on the next page…).
Continue onto the next page for more!
Well come Christmas morning I unwrap grandma’s flashlight to something that looks like flashlight but had a “fleshy” opening on the end… My brother is in tears my uncle nearly has a heart attack. The rest of the family isn’t sure how to react. My grandma asked if my brother had gotten the right flashlight I wanted.
I said “Yep, it’s perfect grandma.”
10/26. My mom’s aunt bought me a t-shirt with a playboy bunny in colorful rhinestones on it for christmas one year. I’m hoping she just thought it was cute and didn’t know what it really was.
11/26. A friend of my ex wife gave us a fancy engraved picture frame when we had our baby, with her kid’s name engraved on it.
12/26. My grandparents sent me an erotic novel about the gold rush for my birthday. I was fourteen.
13/26. My grandmother got me a pocket sudoku because I like video games.
She also got my brother Brokeback Mountain on dvd with a pack of cowboy movies.
She definitely means well.
14/26. Several years ago relatives from New England I’ve never met came to my parents’ house and brought Christmas gifts. My gift? (story continued on the next page…).
Continue onto the next page for more!
My gift was a horse blanket. I didn’t have a horse. Apparently they thought everyone in Oklahoma rode a horse. The last horse I rode was on the merry-go-round at the fair.
They said, “You do have a horse, don’t you?” I said, “No, not at the moment, but you never know.” It was awkward.
15/26. I love jigsaw puzzles. Last Christmas, my family bought me a 100 piece Disney puzzle, likely geared towards 5-6 year olds. I’m 30.
16/26. I once got my friend a birthday card whose front cover was about how difficult it was to find a gift for him… turns out, on the way to the party, my mom said the card was inappropriate and we stopped at Walgreens. I was so embarrassed, so I stuffed it in my jacket pocket.
I found the card the next year and discovered the card implied I was dildo shopping for him. The mental scarring returned.
17/26. My dad bought me Ann Coulter’s How to Talk to Liberals (If You Must) for because he honestly believed the book was satire. When I explained that, no, Ann Coulter’s just delusional, he felt REALLY bad.
18/26. When I was a kid, my parents gave me a bit of money to go get my grandparents presents for their anniversary. I was 8, and really proud that I’d be able to get something special. My mom always had this really nice smelling lotion that my grandma liked, so I went to the department store looking for it. I stumbled across this lotion that kind of resembled it, so I bought it. Turns out (story continued on the next page…).
Continue onto the next page for more!
Turns out it was lube. Yes, a bottle of lube. I don’t understand why the cashier didn’t wonder “Hey, what’s that kid doing buying a bottle of lube?”
Anyway, my grandparents and parents had a good laugh about it, and when they explained why it was so funny, I pretty well died of embarrassment.
[deleted]
19/26. We were doing a secret santa gift exchange with a suggestion page where you could post hints about what your giver should get you. I wrote “I’m starting up a diet on New Year’s, so some tasty foodstuffs might be nice to have before then.”
I got a (very nice) donut making machine. That I did not get a chance to use before New Year’s.
20/26. I had left some video games in my mom’s room, she found them and assumed my dad had bought them as Christmas gifts for me. So for Christmas I got… my own games.
21/26. So a few years ago my grandma had her legs amputated. Don’t feel bad, since then, her health has improved a ton. Anyway, last Christmas my Aunt bought her socks. It was pretty awful.
22/26. When I was a young teen, my mom and I would have a movie night every week. It was really great getting to sit down together, and get to hang out with just the two of us. One day however, my mom was running late from work. So when she went over to our local Blockbuster (yes, this was pre Netflix), she just grabbed a movie from the ‘New Release’ section, and brought it home. (story continued on the next page…)
Continue onto the next page for more!
It was this movie called “Hard Candy”. It’s a small indie film, so you may not recognize the title, but it’s about a young girl who gets revenge on this sexual predator.
My mom turned it off within the 1st 30 minutes.
[deleted]
23/26. I have a really large extended family. One year we had a big family reunion, and I met my grandparents cousins for the first time. They presented me with this really nice necklace with my name engraved on it.
Except, it wasn’t my name. My name is Kristy it said “Cathy”.
[deleted]
24/26. I got a vacuum cleaner once for my birthday. I was 13 and I had to use it to vacuum my room.
25/26. I love cats, so my stepmom gave me a stuffed cat for Christmas 2002. Like a cat who underwent taxidermy in sleeping position.
My cat kept attacking it and hissing at it, eventually I put it in the freezer and forgot about it until I had a dinner party and I told my friend to get some ice.
26/26. A gift card to a lingerie store from my grandma…