Monday, January 7, 2013

Ban the bloody gift


‘Ok Mama, ready for the party. Where’s the gift?’ shouts Neel.

Where’s the gift? Where’s what gift? What’s what gift? .... Didn’t buy it!!! Help!

You’d think I’d learn from past experience, but I never do, do I?

So, the marathon panic session begins yet again.

I charge up to the hidden stash of gifts they’ve been given – duplicates etc. Pull out the cooking set. Won’t do. It’s a boy’s party. Not a single rotten car. Or Beyblade. There’s a headless superman. Won’t do! Books? The kids too young for Harry Potter and too old for Noddy. Money’s too cheap to give! Help Help!

‘Mamaaa, getting late!’ the yell drifts up.

The cooking set it will be! Maybe the little boy will grow up to be a great chef and thank me for it endlessly (and call me for 5 star meals?)

Wrapping paper’s squashed into a ball. Kids had a fight with it. Store is closed! I read somewhere you can iron out wrapping paper. Yippee! Plug in the iron.

Try to tear the price tag off the cooking set – a chunk of the box peels off. Aaargh!

Iron the wrapping paper and it works! Something’s going right. No wrinkles – just that bit in the centre left – press the iron harder – and – gosh – a great big burn! No, no, not now!

‘Mamaaaaaaa!’

Swaddle the peeling plastic cooking set in the burnt wrapping paper. Try to cut off the darned cello tape and it starts sticking to everything but the paper. To the scissors, to the iron, to my fingers.... to my teeth (don’t ask!)

Maybe I can cover the gaping hole with the gift card? Nope, too small. There’s a magazine lying around with a big ad for Eurokids. Have a brainwave! Cut out the beaming kids in the ad and stick them over the burnt hole. They don’t cover it. Cut out a teddy bear’s head and add it. There! Done!

‘Mamaaaaaa!’

Go running down the stairs and fling the gift at Neel poised at the door, who catches it expertly and if he wonders why he has a slippery parcel with a Eurokids ad and beheaded teddy bears on it, he doesn’t ask.

Neel is never invited to this particular boy’s birthday party ever again!

28 comments:

  1. Hillarious! We had this lesson in school called Uncle Podger hangs a picture, and the way you write reminds me so much of that story.

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    1. Jerome K Jerome? Thank you, Arty. That really is a compliment!

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  2. Super funny!!! I wouldn't have heard the end of it if I had been my son tho :)

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    1. The trick, Aparna, is to do it out of his line of vision. :)

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  3. That's life!!!!!!!!! super funny... wait till Neel knows what you are really upto! I loved reading it and had a good laugh which I so needed. I agree to one thing gifts should be banned!

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    1. So you start, Ira? Don't bring a gift this time? :P

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    2. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr I don't bring presents I give and treat my boys just like I do with Aaria and I have all the right to buy my boys anything... BTW I don't gift wrap it either as they are not gifts :P

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  4. Hehe Jane, sounds a lot like something I would do/did :). The other extreme is having a present lying around bought for the kid-next-door, but he's definitely going to have outgrown it by the time I manage to visit!

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    1. So true! And the expiry date's gonna read last year.

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  5. LOL :D Now it sounds funny then it must be so frustrating na!

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    1. Very. Especially the cello tape ALWAYS gets stuck everywhere. Does it happen to you?

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  6. hahaha... jandy ... iam so getting used to this regular dose of humor... yes it happens.. i go looking for that silly jewelry box or something at the last minute.. :D and then that wrapping paper.. i remember somebody here had posted about wrapping papers :D and i was grinning all over.. :D and yes the cellotape.. first it wont come out and then stick everywhere :D who can put it down better than u !

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    1. Thanks, member of the Universal Sisterhood of Unprepared Gifters!

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  7. Really fun piece.. I can sooo understand this gifting thing... that's why like you I too have my duplicates stash...

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  8. hahahahahahahaaaa......Ohh Boy. Jane, sweetie, Tuesday never sounded so much better. Loved it

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    1. Thanks. Will you invite Neel to your next birthday party? :P

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  9. My son is named Neil too but we spell it with the i, yes we are the crazy-trying-to-make-our-kid's-name-sound-global-parents!! :)
    Would you hate me if I say this never happens to me. To continue bragging, I have a stash of wrapping papers and I pick the gift up way in advance and wrap it beautifully and add a lovely name tag too. Ah, the joy that brings to me!! Sigh, no birthday parties in the near future.
    But jokes apart, I would love to ban birthday gifts too and have just birthday parties full of fun, games and stuff that kids like to do!! And in this scenario, I shall wait for Diwali/Christmas/any other occasion which demands a gift to wrap one ;)

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    1. I want to be reborn as you in my next janm. And be organized. seriously. sigh!

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  10. Brilliant I loved it, so funny...

    I've got a way many times with giving a person wrapping paper/ newspaper , the present, cello tape and scissors and package the whole idea as a do it yourself kit.. ;)

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    1. haha. seriously? that's such an idea - warning, gonna actually do that some day!

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  11. Totally totally empathize :) Button has given many badly wrapped gifts too! I use newspaper quite a lot and try to pass off as a hippy tree-hugging neo-environmentalist :) Howzzat?!

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    1. VErrrrry cool. i want everyone to start giving newspaper wrapped gifts... make it a trend!

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  12. My son'a classmate took recycled paper, sketched on it, colored it and used that as a wrapping paper. I still have that with me 10 years later :) She had wrapped a box containing a bouncy ball--- she had 5 bouncy balls and she gave him 1 bouncy ball from her stash :) My kiddo played with that bouncy ball for long. I thought that was a real nifty idea.

    Hilarious read Jane!

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    1. Wow, yes I wish people would recycle toys more rather than buy new ones - my boys' favourite toy is a box full of odds n ends of lego that a friend gave them because her son grew out of it. They make the most imaginative things out of that.

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  13. your technique was actually quite ingenious. the one time mumma forgot to buy a present, she wrapped up my enid blyton collection as a present to the guy. why was i punished for that boys birthday i will never understand.

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