Giant pajamas and other bizarre gifting practices

[Redhead Erin]

My mom bought my son some sweats.  Like about half the stuff she buys him, it was the wrong size. She lied about where she got it (Said it came form wal-mart, but Wal-mart told me it has the wrong tags on it.  Also didn't come from k-mart) and of course cannot produce a receipt.  So now I am stuck with these clothes that do not fit my child and cannot be exchanged for a proper size.   

In a normal family, people might say, "Well, Mom is 78 years old.  stuff happens."  BUT---we all know this is not a normal family, this is a NM matriarchy run by Madame Puppet Master.  She does this on purpose. She does it all the time.  She does not want anyone to be able to exchange anything. 

It is a running joke with my husband and me that every Christmas, she buys him a pair of humongous pajamas.  She always loses the receipt, lies about where they came from, and acts hurt and put out if he wants to exchange them for a size that actually fits.  Yes, she takes it as a personal affront if the gifts she buys do not fit. As if the recipient has purposely lost weight/gained weight/grown 4 inches simply to avoid using her gift. 

Oh, also let me point out that whenever she gives a gift, it means so little to her that she barely remembers having done it later on.  She is always amazed that her grand kids remember the things she gave them and get offended when she doesn't.  Uh, gee, Mom, do you think that is because we like to kid ourselves into believing you actually THINK when you choose a gift? Hmmmm? And whenever she gives me anything, she has to make a huge deal out of how she found it on clearance/didn't want it for herself anyway/in some other way is passing on to me useless junk that she really does not think much of.

Even stranger, when we first moved to this house and had ato give up our water bed (too heavy) she called me up and told me she would buy us a bed, but only if we were willing to except the very cheapest one made.

She also did this when she bought me the car.  I found a Hyundai sonata for a terrific discount because it was a demo car.  Now, a sonata is not a luxury car--it is the 2nd smallest sedan Hyundai makes. And with the discount, the one I found was much less expensive than they smallest model Hyundais, Toyotas, and Hondas.    Wouldn't you think a normal mother would say, "How wonderful, you are getting a nicer car for less money"? nope.  She was mad because I didn't settle for the smallest Toyota, even though my knees rubbed the steering column and the seat hurt my back.  She actually told me I should keep a pair of flat shes in the car for driving so my knees would rub less. 

Its almost as if she wants to give us stuff that is on some way harmful to us.  ANd we should jsut shut up and take it, no matter how junky, inappropriate, or useless the gift really is.

We have figured out this is some sort of weird manipulation thing.  Everybody here knows how NMs and other Ns are legendary in their terrible gift giving.   But to look at a person holding an article of clothing that is obviously the wrong size and pitch a fit over that person wanting to exchange the item for one that fits . . . . I understand when she manipulates for some purpose, like to get me to drive 90 minutes in the dark to check out her imaginary prowler.  That at least has a purpose.  She gets something out of it.  But what on earth can she get out of   forcing us to put perfectly good items of clothing in the goodwill box?

[Sealynx]

Congrats on choosing the Sonata, its a sweet little car. My dad was in a wreck driving his and it kept him from being killed by the impact.  My mother has one now and I love the way it handles. I hope you bought it.

Gift giving is a sore issue with mine too. She always picks the wrong size (usually freakishly large) and has no taste when it comes to us, even though she can spend hours making herself look beautiful for a simple afternoon of shopping. She loves to pass on junk, but if you show interest in something she immediately reconsiders its importance. One time we were going swimming at a friend's pool when I went to visit and I didn't have my suit. She had this vintage suit from the 40's that I just loved. It was stripped cotton with elastic embedded in the rows....so cool. She couldn't put her foot in it and never swims, but my wanting it was enough for her to decide she couldn't part with it!!

She is just as bad if not worse with my niece. She never asks how she did in school and no idea what the child enjoys. My sister tells that my neice is very particular (which she is)  and insists she sends money for b'days and holidays and let the child choose what she likes.

Comedy writer of David Letterman fame and child of two very N parents, Merrill Markoe, wrote about this weird gift giving in one of her books, "It's my F***ing Birthday". It is a journal of sorts of a decade of horrible birthdays spent with self-absorbed parents. I highly recommend it as you probably need a good laugh about now....and it is oh so true. Amazon has it. You can find an excerpt on her website at http://merrillmarkoe.com/writing  but it isn't running very well right now. Apparently the word is out that she was one of Letterman's affairs so the site is swamped.
S

[BonesMS]

Hmmmmmmm........with unwanted, unsuitable, BIZARRE gifts that DON'T FIT ANYONE.....I'm thinking "TAX DEDUCTION" and donating them to the Salvation Army!     (What is one person's trash could become someone else's treasure, ESPECIALLY if someone else can use it!)  If the NWomb-Donor SCREECHES about it...."Well, it's going for a GOOD CAUSE, are you THAT SELFISH?!?!?!?"  I would LOVE to watch the expression on her face while contemplating THAT question!    *EVIL GRIN*!!!

Bones

[Redhead Erin]

Thanks for the morning laugh, guys!  I sooooo needed it this morning.

I ma thinking of buying DH some suspenders to present to him immediately after he opens this years monster pajamas.  "Here, honey!  I knew you would need this!"

[getnbtr]

I thought that I was alone on this one! Guess not. CB, I know what you are saying. We have 5 children and my NMIL has been sending us junk for Christmas for 27 years. Any free promotional stuff, like pencils, balloons, coloring pages, etc... stuffed animals, the same one for each child and the same one every year. My children are all over the age of 15 and still this is what is sent. For Birthdays she sends them $1.00. She wants thank you notes from them for it too. My husband received $2.00 for his birthday when he was 50. She said to go and buy something nice for himself! In all of her cards she writes about where she is traveling to or where she has been. We have talked to her about these issues when she calls to ask us how we liked the gifts. We have asked her to stop too, it does no good.

I know where my NH gets his gift giving skills. Our cleaning lady has a husband that drives a trash truck. She brings discarded items that her husband brings home to my husband. He buys them from her to give to me as gifts! He knows where they come from and that they do not work. When I receive my precious Christmas presents I am told that I will need to take them to be repaired! I have gotten a sewing machine that had the motor installed backwards, a mantel clock that was never built right. I have taken these treasures to multiple repair shops at NH request with no luck. It just makes me laugh now. He's into BIG ugly jewelry too. He buys himself big pieces of construction equipment and leaves them in the rain to deteriorate...never even uses them, but makes sure everyone knows that he has them!

It's not that either one of them can't afford decent gifts. It's obvious just how little they care.

divorce, move away with no forwarding address....great idea CB123!!!! I like the way you think!   

[Redhead Erin]

This is hilarious.  I am still laughing about the MIL hiding her "gifts" behind the garage.  What could she have been thinking! 

Mine likes to give us Christmas stockings full of freebies, too.  Once she gave us all the free soaps and shampoos the gave her on a cruise to Panama.  (There is a t-shirt like this, no? "My mother went on an international cruise, and all I got was this lousy soap!") and junk form the dollar store.  She always makes a little gift bag for each of the kids every year for vacation, and, in the interest of being "fair" gives then all exactly the same things.  This is wildly inappropriate when you consider that the 4 kids range from a very bright 9 year old girl to a mildly challenged 6 year old boy, and she is giving thm things that are too young even for him. She feel sshe is being very generous to do this. 

[indiered]

I haven't laughed this hard in a long time!  I too have been the recipient of The Giant PJs. My immediate family however didn't find this "generous gift" funny.
Had it not been for my innate sense of humor...Like giving my NM a size triple Z bra, and saying I knew you would just love it!!

One of the only reasons that I hadn't committed suicide after years of this behavior (from Ns) is that I refused to let them use my death as their platform, for their own selfish aggrandisement.

With love laughter and tears,

Indiered

[English]

Something sticks out in my memory that NM did a few years ago before I knew about N.  My H told everyone he didn't want any Christmas gifts.  He just doesn't want to hem and haw over stuff he didn't want in the first place.  He believes that if there is something he wants he will get exactly what he wants himself.  He told everyone-no gifts.  So NM gives him gifts.  He turns them down and gives them back to her.  She was shocked.  Then she said, "Gifts are for the giver, not the person receiving the gift."  She said that gifts are to make the giver feel good.  WEIRD.  So narcissistic .   

[Redhead Erin]

Yeah, we went through that with the car.  She was so mad that *I* found the vehicle I wanted, and that she did not get to dictate what I would be driving for the next 200,000 miles.  She would have completely backed out of it if she could have, but she wanted to have that leverage over me and to kid herself about being such a generous person. 

She got her pants all in a wad about "being denied the experience of giving a gift."  It made no sense to me, but then, what does in her world?

[Ales2]

Just do what I do - I just have a box for GOODWILL, I unwrap it and its gets dumped. No muss, no fuss.   

Two years ago she gave me a faux fur scarf (I live in LA - no one wears scarves here!), the book THE SECRET (okay not so bad) and a cheap dime store retractable umbrella (come to think of it - it probably was a free gift for getting a credit card).  Anyway, she's a terrible gift giver unless I tell her precisely what I need and nothing more ( a cuisnart toaster, for example) but then she always makes me feel like gift giving is blackmail, so I rarely ask.

[Redhead Erin]

Mine  always asks what we want, then buys whatever she pleases instead.  Once she asked what my husband wanted, and I told her to go to the hobby store whee he always goes, ask for the guy who always helps him, and that guy would know what to buy.  I even called the guy for her and set up an appointment.  She didn't go because "it was too much trouble."  Huh?  I thought she wanted to be known for her generous gift giving!

SHe also as supposed to buy my son hockey skates, but didn't order them even after I gave her all the information.  A week before Christmas I asked if she had ordered them, and she said no, and gave some dumb reason.   So we had to make a rush order and Ted had to drive way out of his way on Christmas Eve to pick them up.

Husband got a good laugh the other  night. Two years ago he got Cincinnati Bengals PJs.  He hates the Bengals and we live in Illinois.  But he hates the bears more, so he got to wear his Bengals PJs for the bears-Bengals game!   

[debkor]

My NF  once gave other peoples pictures (family photo) that was brought from Salvation Army as a birthday gift.  She thought it was the funniest thing in the world.  A gag gift and the only gift.  Now that's bizarre. 

I also would get size 12 skirts (I wear a 5 or 7) of this would be to big for me it will fit you right? or my D, right? who is a 3. 

And the very best... from ex....The Bride Of Frankenstein model kit for my birthday....Valentines Day, A reese cup, 2 boxes of girl scout cookies in a brown paper bag.

Love
Deb

[Redhead Erin]

What is it with buying everything soBIG? Do we really look that fat to them?  Or is it supposed to be an insult? 

I also recently had this strange thing happened between her and me last spring.  I had to stay over at her house for some unexpected reason.  I had to borrow something to sleep in, and I found a brand new pair of sweat pants in her basement.  Yes, this woman has clothes stuffed into every closet AND hanging form the rafters in the basement that she does not even know she has, and yet she runs around in rags. 

Anyway, I borrowed the sweats and they fit me like they were made for me.  At the time I was about a size 10 or so, and am 5'6".  She is like a size 22, and 5'0".  I commented on the terrific luck, to find something that fit me so well.  The next time I was there, she gave me the sweats, which would not have fit her anyway in a million years, accompanied by a lengthy explanation of the reason she was giving them to me was, she did not want to spend money to have them hemmed up.      I mean, she really  went out of her way to make the point that the reason she was giving me these pants was that they were not worth the money to have them hemmed.

A week or so later, just for fun, I remarked how much I was enjoying those sweats because they were so comfortable.  Again, I got a long explanation of how it would have been just too much trouble to have them hemmed. She made it clear that the sweats were so much junk, and she was only giving them to me in order to save herself the hassle of running them all the way over to the cleaners where she pays to have her raggedy clothes pressed. 

She does this with a lot of the stuff she gives me--actually makes a point of telling me that she is giving me her unwanted junk.  She buys me groceries once in a while.  It is rarely anything I use or would buy for myself (canned vegetables, products made of white flour, cake mixes, and always a big jar of grape jelly! I put them in the pantry in case of emergency.)Then she always tells me how she shops at the most expensive grocery store in the area, and they had this stuff on sale buy one, get one free, so she gave me the free ones!  (Don't think I really spent any money on you, because I didn't!)

And she gave us some really awful towels a couple of times, and made a big deal over how she got them on clearance for something like $2 a bundle. That is more than they were worth, believe me!

So not only is she giving me junk/cast-offs/bargain bin items, she makes sure I know it is junk/cast-offs/bargain bin items.

And then wants to be praised for her generosity!

[getnbtr]

My NH tells me this morning that he has fixed the mower. ( meaning mow the yard), and his clothes are dirty. (meaning wash his clothes), and that there is wood on the back porch. (meaning start the wood stove). He acts like he just gave me a great gift. Meanwhile his employees stacked the wood up and fixed the mower. He just stands around and smokes cigars and tells people what to do. I couldn't help it and responded with "Thank you MASTER". He was furious and went out of the house slammimg the door. But, he does that when I offer him a cup of coffee too. He never asks me to do anything unless he says "Do you think that you can do this or that today?" Never asking in a moderate tone, more like he's really pissed to ask...and there is NEVER an opology for anything! Even when we were visiting a T. If cornered he simply says, "I guess I shouldn't have done that." It's so WEIRD!!! So my gifts today were, a lawn to mow, clothes to wash and a fire to tend....how can one girl be so lucky! Ooooppss, forgot to mention that he pulled a roast out of the freezer and threw it on the counter...

[Hopalong]

Hey Erin,
How old is your mother?

I was wondering if there might be a contorted reasoning going on in her head (apart from or addition to the N-ism) where she thinks she's dignifying you by undercutting the act of giving with all those rationales for why the gift caused her no sacrifice...

Sometimes that's a generational thing, not that it explains Nism away by a long shot...

But something in that reasoning rang a chime in my head, I've heard people before pretzel themselves to deny that they're giving, but THEY think they're doing all that to absolve the recipient of shame, because THEY would feel ashamed at receiving gifts, because deeeeeeeeeeeep down in, they feel worthless.

Make any sense?

Not trying to deny how frustrating and hurtful it is to be "gifted" by her. Just wondering if that odd monologue could be going on in her head, too.

hugs
Hops