Friday, April 19, 2013

Here's your birthday present. I already unwrapped it for you.

A close friend of ours is having a birthday next week, so given that he's an aviation nut, we bought three DVDs about aircraft for him. Great bargain - three for $25.95.

G was with me when we bought them, so he knew they were destined to be a gift.

Which doesn't explain why, when we got home, he calmly tore the wrapping off one and started to watch it.

"What are you doing?" I yelped.

"Oh, Chris'll never know," he replied airily.

"He mightn't be the sharpest tool in the shed but he'll see one of them has been opened."

"So I can open all of them and they'll look the same."

Dear Herbert!! What to do?  I don't have access to one of those clever machines that shrinkwraps things.

So after G had duly watched all three - realising along the way he already had one of them as a video tape from decades past - I experimented with ways to seal the boxes so they looked like new. I tried sticky tape over the opening. Yuk. I cut clear ConTact paper into a careful circle and stuck it over the opening. Still didn't look great.

I told Mum what G had done, as Chris is a friend of her's too, and she was horrified. "What did he do that for? Is he alright in the head?"

We both agreed that when Chris opened his present, his first reaction would be that we had given him three DVDs we had finished with and no longer wanted. In short, an insult.

It was with a sigh I went back to the newsagent today, without G, and bought three new copies of the DVDs. I won't tell G. I'll just make sure he doesn't do it again; next time I'll hide any DVDs we buy for others the instant we get home.

I'm giving the others to Mum to watch, as she was married to a pilot and finds aviation stories interesting. I'll just tell her to hide them when G and I drop in.

What's your view? Is giving someone a 'used' present (unless it's vintage, antique etc) an insult?

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