Plays out of the Social(ly) Offensive Playbook, Part 1

The Worst Wedding Gift Ever

Not too long from now, my little sister will be getting married. Even sooner, she will have a shower thrown for her where she will be lavished with gifts of all sorts in advanced celebration of those impending nuptials.

Therefore, it seemed only appropriate that I trot out one of my all-time favorite stories. It is also my sure-fire "go-to" story in social situations that require a little punching up. It's a story about the time my wife and I got the most bizarre, damaging, and possibly insulting gift in the history of weddings. It's the first and only gift I've ever received that I would term a "net negative gift".

Let me first take you back 10+ years to a time right before our wedding when we were mulling over whether or not we should start inviting people off of our "B" list.

Big mistake.

The "B" list, as I'm sure you could surmise, is a group of reserve names that one feels iffy about in the first place so they don't make the original cut for the invite list. Over time, RSVPs come back, some people regretfully decline, and spots open up.

Now, over time, what I've come to realize about the "B" list is that while it may seem like a good idea at the time, it never ends up manifesting itself that way. This is because magically these people are the ones that seem to generate the most chaos around an event and end up doing something that everybody remembers them for after the fact... and not in a good way. In a lot of cases, these are the people who get the most drunk and your friends start asking "Who is that guy???" I wish we had gotten off so lucky. Basically, I think the maxim of this is that if they're not good enough to invite in the first cut, there's probably a reason for it, and you probably should avoid them altogether.

It is from one of these such "B"-listers that "The Worst Wedding Gift Ever(TM)" came from.

The day after the wedding, my parents, one of my two best men, and my cousin were kind enough to bring over carloads of wedding gifts from the reception to our apartment. During the course of the unloading process, we were beginning to notice that some of the presents were wet. As more and more gifts were being unloaded, we were noticing that some things were very wet, including a box that contained our guest book and a number of other trinkets from the reception (the cake cutter, some mini-bottles of champagne that were on the tables). We took one look at the guest book and saw that the cover was ruined and was already starting to mold a bit. The ink from some of the signatures had run as well to the point where you couldn't make some of them out anymore. This made us a bit frustrated, but since we could not ascertain the source of the wetness, we couldn't as of yet blame anybody.

Over the course of the next couple of days, we went through the process of opening all of the presents. When we got close to the end, we came across this box that was wrapped in baby-pink wrapping paper with a note taped on top in mixed-case hostage letter font that read:

"Prepare to enter the mindless zone"

Dear God. What the hell was this? As I unwrapped the paper from the box, I saw myself staring at a 24-pack of Molson Canadian beer. Already this was a bit unorthodox, but hey, I like beer, so I could probably live with this no questions asked. However, upon further inspection, the flaps of the box were not sealed down, but instead opened quite easily. It was then that I noticed that not all 24 bottles were in there. Instead, the outer rim of the box had bottles and there was another, smaller box in the middle, with another note taped to the top. I picked it up and read it:

"In celebration of Jesus's miracle at the wedding party in Cana, where he turned the water into wine, I decided to drink these beers with a minister and replace them with water. You may now kick the bride."

Holeeee sh*t.

We now officially have a mental patient on our hands. We also now had the source of the water that had gotten all over the place and ruined our guest book. For you see, he had in fact filled the bottles back up with water and had attempted to put the caps back on.

And there was still one more box to go.

It was at this point where I turned to Cindy and said "There had better be a pretty f*cking amazing gift in that box".

I opened it up. There were two power bars and a note. (Yes you read that correctly). Here's what the note said:

"I think of the two of you as having unique personalities. That's why I've included two powerbars, one vanilla and one chocolate. It's up to you to determine which one of you is the vanilla and which is the chocolate."

That's it?????? What the f*ck?!?!?!?!

There was no gift. There was no certificate for a gift. Just a leaky box, three notes, and two powerbars. And it ruined our guest book, which if you look at the cost of it as well as the sentimental value versus what we gained with those two powerbars, it was a NET NEGATIVE GIFT.

I looked at Cindy and said, "I don't remember registering for that one."

Days later, in an attempt to squeeze some lemonade out of the lemon that was "that gift", I tried eating one of the powerbars. I took a bite out of the chocolate bar and my mouth rejected it as not even being food. I spit it out. I couldn't even get THAT satisfaction out of it. I threw the powerbars in the trash, put the empty beer bottles out for recycling (yes, I had to open and empty each one) and washed my hands of the whole deal.

When filling out thank you notes some time later, we struggled with how to phrase it for this special case. "Thanks for the sh*tty gift." we thought about as one option. "Thanks for two disgusting powerbars." was a slightly more diplomatic one. Fortunately, during the time we had tabled sending out that thank you card, the story had become so famous that the maid of honor confronted the person in question and explained aobut the damage that had been done, and in the end he man'd up and sent a real gift.