Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Birthday Party

Another candle on the cake. Another year gone by. Another prime opportunity for my family (not my "new" family, but my "old" family) to make right all the crazy missteps through the years and finally find some appropriate gifts for somebody they've known this long. So when my (old) family gives a birthday present, I always hope that this year will be different.

Nope. From my sister: NOTHING! Actually, receiving nothing is better than the gifts she gives me, which over the years have included:
- A plastic blue "beehive" hairdo
- A pair of Abe Lincoln boxing puppets
- "Pee Guy": a small figurine of a latino-looking man with a plastic stream of pee going from his crotch to the base of the figurine.

Yes, all memorable and very useful indeed, but they pale in comparison with the types of gifts my mom gives me. It's always clothes. Clothes that must originate at the very bottom of the last-ditch bargain basement pile. For Lee's Birthday 2007 I got a t-shirt that is the color of poop. It's a weird brown color that has no other possible description. The kicker there is that the shirt is size 14/16. Now, I'm no XL person but I can wear adult size shirts, mom.

She also gave me two polo style shirts that, although I wear polo style shirts, would probably make the general public wonder if I had lost my way from the nearest mental facility. Does she see the clothes I wear now? Does she remember the types of shirts I wore as a teenager at home? My sincere hope is that she bought these for the homeless kids at the local shelter and they got mixed up with the fly threads she bought me. Boom, right into the Goodwill bag with the gifts.

The real tragedy here is that this gift-buying behavior is now being passed onto my son. Mom included an extra little gift pack for Judah along with the thoughtful gifts for me. With so many cute clothes for kids nowadays, how could she go wrong? Girls clothes. Yep. Poor kid.