This isn’t my story, but my husband’s grandmother always liked to see a lot of gifts under the tree, so if it was looking a little sparse, she would go grab stuff from her pantry and wrap it to go under the tree. Which is why my husband, at age 5, was gifted a giant jar of peanut butter.
I don't need any more reasons to love you, but you continue to drop little nuggets into my inbox that do exactly that. I'm not following the rules, or answering your question, but I feel compelled to just share my appreciation for you every time I read you. And I'm in awe everytime (because apparently I'm like a goldfish with no memory and it's a sweet surprise every time) I'm in awe that I can learn so much from someone in these little snippets and posts and it's incredibly pleasing to me and continues to make writing feel so accessible (even though I continue to be intimidated by it!)- so thank you for being you and sharing that with us!
Lindsey, thank you for this. So much. It's vulnerable to share and knowing it's landing somewhere like this feels so affirming. (also- you just moved me so much with your words-- you ARE a writer already xx)
This doesn't start out funny but it ends funny. So I have a younger sister, it's just the 2 of us. I look more like my Dad, my sister looks more like my Mom. My paternal grandmother was mentally ill and also a mean bitch. She obviously favored me over my sister because I looked like my Dad. My parents smoothed this over because of family dynamics, yada yada, for many years until we were old enough to recognize what was going on. It all came to a head when for Christmas crazy bitch grandma gave my sister a stack of presents that included clothes that were far too small and toys far too young for her age. Crazy bitch grandma goes "Oh, well, if the clothes don't fit and she doesn't like the toys, she can give them to [name redacted of much younger female cousin]." So my sister is maybe like 9 and younger cousin is maybe 4, so at this point everyone realizes she INTENTIONALLY did this. My parents lose their shit. Within a year or so, it's fuzzy, we stopped seeing her altogether. I was maybe 13?
Fast forward and she dies while I'm in grad school. Petty to the end, she leaves my family out of the will. The rest of our family was like nope to that, so everything got redistributed evenly. I was in grad school, my sister was in college, so despite being poor we both spent every dime of that inheritance on frivolities as a fuck you to her. My husband and I, broke at the time otherwise, enjoyed 3 weeks in Italy on her. After sharing with my aunt (dad's sister) that I'd spent the money on that, she cackled about how crazy bitch grandma would have especially hated it because my grandfather had had an affair with an Italian woman while serving in WWII. Also that whole side of the family that was always in some form of turmoil because of her has and continues to get along swimmingly with her gone. We all get buzzed/drunk and play silly games every Christmas eve, it's the best.
Now that I've written this, it doesn't sound that funny, but it IS FUNNY. This is like your story about your Mom as a ghost. It's funny people!!
Michelle, this is so so so so so so good. The fuck you Italy trip to the ghost, because you are Team Sister, just all of it. This is the appropriate way to treat terrible people! I love your family now.
The pickled asparagus truly made me laugh out loud. And I love the way you write about being a fish out of water in your (mostly married) family. My lovely, saintly aunt is the queen of 'worst gifts' (bless her heart. really.). As a kid she got me....the same gift two years in a row, a gas station gift card, and I think she got either my brother or me a very unsexy flashlight. Fast forward to the next generation--for my brother's first baby (a girl), she gifted a thrifted green frog-hooded baby bathrobe inscribed with the name "Adam" on the chest.
ADAM. the embroidery detail is perfect. The family dynamics are so specific- that feeling was so intense and I thought it would last forever. Thank goodness I was wrong.
My mom has always been an interesting and complicated gift-giver and receiver. She looooved to give people gifts - would find something she thought was cool, buy literally a dozen of them and then store them as gifts, 80% of which would never actually be given and ended up being donated when they finally moved out of their big house (when I tell you we were DROWNING in various themed Scentsy warmers and miscellaneous sizes of Vera Bradley pouches who never fulfilled their destiny as shower favors or whatnot). She would ask what we wanted for Christmas or our birthdays, and we'd have 30 gifts to unwrap, not a single one of which was anything close to the thing we had asked for, or anything we had even a passing interest in (complicated! so generous, and also so off-base)! Anyways, I am the younger sister, and for many many years I was the invisible child, since my sister was the golden child who could do no wrong. Somewhere in my teens maybe, my mom got super amped that she knew my favorite dessert (truly wild to think you've cracked some code in knowing something that your nearly 20 year old child enjoys eating 🙃), and would proudly crow about how I was gonna be so excited for my FAVORITE DESSERT when my birthday would roll around each year. Reader, you will not be surprised to know that "my favorite dessert" was in fact... my sister's favorite dessert! And for literally a decade, we all just laughed and ate the damn cake as though it WAS my favorite dessert because after like 25 years of not paying one shred of attention to what anyone else really wanted or liked, she was... trying? I think? I'm 42 now and she still has barely a clue what my preferred birthday dessert might be, but she has dementia so we can chalk it up to that 😉
Christina, I love you and I love your sister. Also, I bet it’s your favorite dessert now. 😂 and I’m so sorry about your mom. My mom has dementia as well. dm anytime if you need to complain or cry or tell me the dumb comment someone made ♥️
I don’t know that I have a particularly memorable worst gift, but about 5 years ago my husband gave me a birthday (i think—could’ve been anniversary) card. I had, previous to this, roasted him for giving me cards that were so generic as to not be suitable for a human you actually know and, you know, gotten married to. But he had worked to improve on that front, and he bought this walgreens card aisle, multi-fold, tells-a-whole story, opens to like 3ft cartoon card. He was very proud of the job he did. It really did tell a good, sweet, and lightly jesting story about a relationship that seemed a lot like ours wishing happy birthday (or anniversary) “to my husband” as in I (a human lady) was being referred to as the husband on the cover of this card.
I could not stop laughing because it was hysterically funny and he fortunately also found it very funny and laughed as hard as I did. In his defense I had often joked that we were Ray and Debra from Everybody Loves Raymond but I was Ray and he was Debra (this was also when I mercilessly roasted him for tivoing everbody loves raymond in like 2010!!!).
It's a toss up between the birthday year my husband got me a winter coat, in August (I was postpartum to boot, really into trying on clothes for six months ahead, as you can imagine) or the other birthday year my husband and kids thought it was funny to get me a trash grabber. We use the trash grabber at home for hard to reach things but I kind of want to murder them every time I do.
This isn’t my story, but my husband’s grandmother always liked to see a lot of gifts under the tree, so if it was looking a little sparse, she would go grab stuff from her pantry and wrap it to go under the tree. Which is why my husband, at age 5, was gifted a giant jar of peanut butter.
I hope that 5 year old made serious trouble with that peanut butter
😂😂😂
I don't need any more reasons to love you, but you continue to drop little nuggets into my inbox that do exactly that. I'm not following the rules, or answering your question, but I feel compelled to just share my appreciation for you every time I read you. And I'm in awe everytime (because apparently I'm like a goldfish with no memory and it's a sweet surprise every time) I'm in awe that I can learn so much from someone in these little snippets and posts and it's incredibly pleasing to me and continues to make writing feel so accessible (even though I continue to be intimidated by it!)- so thank you for being you and sharing that with us!
Lindsey, thank you for this. So much. It's vulnerable to share and knowing it's landing somewhere like this feels so affirming. (also- you just moved me so much with your words-- you ARE a writer already xx)
What a lovely comment!❤️
This doesn't start out funny but it ends funny. So I have a younger sister, it's just the 2 of us. I look more like my Dad, my sister looks more like my Mom. My paternal grandmother was mentally ill and also a mean bitch. She obviously favored me over my sister because I looked like my Dad. My parents smoothed this over because of family dynamics, yada yada, for many years until we were old enough to recognize what was going on. It all came to a head when for Christmas crazy bitch grandma gave my sister a stack of presents that included clothes that were far too small and toys far too young for her age. Crazy bitch grandma goes "Oh, well, if the clothes don't fit and she doesn't like the toys, she can give them to [name redacted of much younger female cousin]." So my sister is maybe like 9 and younger cousin is maybe 4, so at this point everyone realizes she INTENTIONALLY did this. My parents lose their shit. Within a year or so, it's fuzzy, we stopped seeing her altogether. I was maybe 13?
Fast forward and she dies while I'm in grad school. Petty to the end, she leaves my family out of the will. The rest of our family was like nope to that, so everything got redistributed evenly. I was in grad school, my sister was in college, so despite being poor we both spent every dime of that inheritance on frivolities as a fuck you to her. My husband and I, broke at the time otherwise, enjoyed 3 weeks in Italy on her. After sharing with my aunt (dad's sister) that I'd spent the money on that, she cackled about how crazy bitch grandma would have especially hated it because my grandfather had had an affair with an Italian woman while serving in WWII. Also that whole side of the family that was always in some form of turmoil because of her has and continues to get along swimmingly with her gone. We all get buzzed/drunk and play silly games every Christmas eve, it's the best.
Now that I've written this, it doesn't sound that funny, but it IS FUNNY. This is like your story about your Mom as a ghost. It's funny people!!
"IT'S FUNNY, PEOPLE!!" is going to be banging around my for days. We are so lucky to have a sense of humor. 2blessed2bestressed4real.
Michelle, this is so so so so so so good. The fuck you Italy trip to the ghost, because you are Team Sister, just all of it. This is the appropriate way to treat terrible people! I love your family now.
The pickled asparagus truly made me laugh out loud. And I love the way you write about being a fish out of water in your (mostly married) family. My lovely, saintly aunt is the queen of 'worst gifts' (bless her heart. really.). As a kid she got me....the same gift two years in a row, a gas station gift card, and I think she got either my brother or me a very unsexy flashlight. Fast forward to the next generation--for my brother's first baby (a girl), she gifted a thrifted green frog-hooded baby bathrobe inscribed with the name "Adam" on the chest.
ADAM. the embroidery detail is perfect. The family dynamics are so specific- that feeling was so intense and I thought it would last forever. Thank goodness I was wrong.
Not "Adam" on the chest!!!
This made me laugh, felt like a scene in a book I'd want to reread. xo
That's so nice of you to say Sophie, thank you♥️
My mom has always been an interesting and complicated gift-giver and receiver. She looooved to give people gifts - would find something she thought was cool, buy literally a dozen of them and then store them as gifts, 80% of which would never actually be given and ended up being donated when they finally moved out of their big house (when I tell you we were DROWNING in various themed Scentsy warmers and miscellaneous sizes of Vera Bradley pouches who never fulfilled their destiny as shower favors or whatnot). She would ask what we wanted for Christmas or our birthdays, and we'd have 30 gifts to unwrap, not a single one of which was anything close to the thing we had asked for, or anything we had even a passing interest in (complicated! so generous, and also so off-base)! Anyways, I am the younger sister, and for many many years I was the invisible child, since my sister was the golden child who could do no wrong. Somewhere in my teens maybe, my mom got super amped that she knew my favorite dessert (truly wild to think you've cracked some code in knowing something that your nearly 20 year old child enjoys eating 🙃), and would proudly crow about how I was gonna be so excited for my FAVORITE DESSERT when my birthday would roll around each year. Reader, you will not be surprised to know that "my favorite dessert" was in fact... my sister's favorite dessert! And for literally a decade, we all just laughed and ate the damn cake as though it WAS my favorite dessert because after like 25 years of not paying one shred of attention to what anyone else really wanted or liked, she was... trying? I think? I'm 42 now and she still has barely a clue what my preferred birthday dessert might be, but she has dementia so we can chalk it up to that 😉
Christina, I love you and I love your sister. Also, I bet it’s your favorite dessert now. 😂 and I’m so sorry about your mom. My mom has dementia as well. dm anytime if you need to complain or cry or tell me the dumb comment someone made ♥️
I don’t know that I have a particularly memorable worst gift, but about 5 years ago my husband gave me a birthday (i think—could’ve been anniversary) card. I had, previous to this, roasted him for giving me cards that were so generic as to not be suitable for a human you actually know and, you know, gotten married to. But he had worked to improve on that front, and he bought this walgreens card aisle, multi-fold, tells-a-whole story, opens to like 3ft cartoon card. He was very proud of the job he did. It really did tell a good, sweet, and lightly jesting story about a relationship that seemed a lot like ours wishing happy birthday (or anniversary) “to my husband” as in I (a human lady) was being referred to as the husband on the cover of this card.
I could not stop laughing because it was hysterically funny and he fortunately also found it very funny and laughed as hard as I did. In his defense I had often joked that we were Ray and Debra from Everybody Loves Raymond but I was Ray and he was Debra (this was also when I mercilessly roasted him for tivoing everbody loves raymond in like 2010!!!).
This is so sweet. He really tried!!!
He mostly did so well!!
"mostly" lololol
It's a toss up between the birthday year my husband got me a winter coat, in August (I was postpartum to boot, really into trying on clothes for six months ahead, as you can imagine) or the other birthday year my husband and kids thought it was funny to get me a trash grabber. We use the trash grabber at home for hard to reach things but I kind of want to murder them every time I do.
Not a TRASH GRABBER. jail. (not you for the murder, them)
It was so bad they had to get me a make up gift months later I was still so upset!
GOOD