“Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.”~Erma Bombeck
Now the entire world is done talking about the Mayans, we press on closer and closer to Christmas Day. It will be here before we know it!
With that said, today was the Christmas party for the complex that I live at. I must say that today is probably the most memorable party yet.
It was the first time that I had ever eaten chocolate covered potato chips. It was also the first time that I had cream cheese in soy sauce and sesame seeds.
However it was the gift exchange that basically takes the plate of Christmas cookies that you intend on leaving out on Christmas Eve, and throws them all into the sink before shoving them down the garbage disposal.
The gift exchange is not an activity that participated by everyone who attends. But a large number of people do. The idea is that you give a gift before receiving one. Plain and simple. And there’s even a cap of $10 for reach gift. No gifts to be purchased more than that.
So then today after some interesting snack foods and some unusual “caroling” if you will, the gift exchange began.
Each person taking their time to open things before the next person got up to make their selection for a gift.
The rest of this story is something that I couldn’t make up even if I tried:
It wasn’t enough to be greedy this past Wednesday as it was their monthly acts of greed during Food Pantry distribution, but now we have the desperate to do anything to take part in the gift exchange.
The neighbor sitting next to me was called up to pick a gift and when she sat down and opened it up, she found a woman’s wallet inside.
ONE USED WOMAN’S WALLET. Complete with wear & tear.
Now I am given to understand that there is either a tradition or superstition that if you are giving a wallet as a gift, that you leave some small amount of cash inside of it. I do not know if that is for luck or just the beginnings of actually having the purpose of a wallet.
This worn out wallet had no cash in it. But instead, was a photograph of someone’s brother in it. That someone being another neighbor.
The gifter literally just thought that they would empty out a wallet and throw it in a bag, and that would be sufficient enough to participate in the ritual of receiving something different and new in return.
So the person who received the wallet took the photograph over to the person and gave it back. Then the person was humiliated, NOT for the fact that she had been busted by someone who knows her well or by someone who is smart enough to realize that this is not a new gift, but rather the fact that her identity was revealed because she left that photograph inside the used wallet.
How lame, lazy, and cheap must one be? If the limit on a gift is $10 then why couldn’t that person have gone over to the corner store and just purchased some scratch off lottery tickets? Even if it was just one for $1.
And now I am understanding that some way, some how, that gifter miraculously has walked away from this party by receiving two gifts. That one, I am still scratching my head about.
People are strange.
Dambreaker 