Coldguy on Gift giving

I have had this occur to me recently and it appears I should explain my stance on this.  First off for the emailer who wanted to send me a book to read thank you so much in advance, I really do appreciate your kindness and time to take out to send that request however I already have the title in question and will let you enjoy the book yourself.

Now on gifts, I can not accept them, almost ever.  The reason for this is my parents.  When you are a child you often get a gift  for your birthday or holiday and get super excited that you have the object that you acquired.  After a multitude of thank yous to the giver you go and enjoy your gift and are generally happy with whatever you received.  How you might ask did my parents screw this up?

Well what would happen is that for every gift I ever got as a child it would always come with a catch, either doing additional chores, taking time out to help them with computer issues, to downright paying them money for whatever they gave me.  This string attachment got so bad that I came to the point where I would literally refuse presents from them.

In High School for getting As on my report card they attempted to go and take me out to dinner and movies to celebrate, I made up an excuse I was not interested and my sister went instead.  Exactly two weeks later "Hey (sister name) you need to come down and clean the kitchen remember we took you out to see the movie and now it is time for you to pay back."

Now as for giving gifts I am amazing at it.  The amount of care I take into giving a good gift sometimes baffles people to the point they are generally amazed that I could do this.  Now I used to give great gifts to my parents for Christmas, giving them a new desktop and a TiVo when they were in their heyday, however the only thing I would get back would be a shaving kit and packages of socks and underwear.  When they even flat out told me that I do not give them good gifts I point to those and tell them that you gave me shitty gifts when I gave you amazing ones in the past, you are not cheating me out of the money again.

So if I call you a friend, be advised I will attempt to go and give you something amazing that you can use and take advantage of because it is a small thank you for being a close friend or someone who genuinely cares about me.  If I give you a shitty present...there is most likely a reason for that and if I have to spell it out to you....well you are not paying attention.

Oh by the way the shittiest gift is always gift card to a big box store, if you get that it is nothing more then a slap in the face to the person you are giving it to saying "here is a card that will force you to go to a store you (usually) do not shop at and pick something yourself."  There are some good gift cards to give, but that is for another time.