Worst was a pair of cuff-links from my maternal grandmother when I was seven.

Who in the world would think that a boy would want cuff-links for Christmas? A gamma who had only daughters, I guess.

After several years of this form of psychological torture, I went to her when I was ten, and said flat out, "Don't get me clothing for Christmas. No sweaters, no scarves, no mittens, no cuff-links. I want something that's interesting, and useful, and which will add to the fun of my life... like an erector-set, or a microscope, or a chemistry set."

So what did she get? A plaster wall-plaque of the family coat of arms. She seemed so proud that it was not clothing. Who in the world could think that a wall-decoration could possibly be interesting to a ten-year old boy? I mean... if it had been a wall-mountable mock-up of the front viewer from the bridge of the Star-ship Enterprise, that's one thing, but a Gothic coat of arms?!? Come on.

Overall and in general, the issue tended to be that all the female members of the family (and there were a lot between all the aunts and great aunts and cousins) had the extremely weird idea that I would give a rat's-ass about what I was wearing insolong as I was warm, yet, no matter how many times I tried to explain to them that great gifts would be something that I could use with my mind for play, they still never stopped with the stupid knitted mittens and sweaters, when anyone could see that a package of plastic dinosaurs would have cost less than the wool, and it would have taken less time to produce, and in the world of imagination they would have been a billion times more interesting and enjoyable than another dumb sweater.

I just don't get it, but you know what... I still see it happening to this day.... women giving kids presents to make those kids look sweet to the gift-giver, regardless of how miserable the kid is going to be in it, and how disappointed he's going to be for not getting anything useful for play.

Now, to be fair, it wasn't just women. I had to go through the ritual process of being gifted with ice-skates and baseball gloves, even though I'd told them I wanted a chemistry set and a microscope.

When they saw the look on my face, the uncle and the dad asked what the problem was, and I re-iterated what I thought had been made clear already, which was that skate were okay as long as I could be left alone on a frozen lake to build up some speed, but that the skating-rinks were always over-run with dudes intent on slamming into each other and knocking themselves over, and that if I wanted a baseball glove, that would be easy enough to get for myself from paper-route savings, and that what I needed were the cool things that were actually interesting and that I couldn't afford for myself...

So, the adult males weren't perfect either, but at least they tended to listen and learn faster...

... sometimes ...

I'd figured out how to make the step from water-colors to oil-paints by the time I was eleven, and Gramps saw some of my renditions of dinosaurs I'd done onto slabs of cedar shingle. He asked what I wanted for my birthday, and I told him that I wanted acrylics - because they dried faster - in three primary colors plus a pure white and a pure black, plus a few extra camel-hair brushes, and so I got a cheezy paint-by-number kit... did he really think I made those dinosaur pics via paint-by-number? And it was of a sailboat... which would be *so* interesting to a kid living on the prairies who's never seen salt water and who spends his weekends in the coolies digging for fossil bones, wouldn't it?

By the time I was in the tenth grade I gave up and just asked them to give me the money, and I'd do it myself.

What I couldn't figure out was... I had mentally prepared myself for them to get mad at me for me not appreciated their "thought-that-counts", but instead they all got quite, and sad... and some of the women actually started to cry.

Weird.

I received a condom from my aunt's weed smoking boyfriend like 6 years ago. I have to say, that was a horrible gift.