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Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Regifting

Has it happened to you? Chances are it has; you might have known it, but then again you might not have. A girl in my office just received a set of glasses as an engagement gift that she's sure was regifted. This spawned our whole conversation about the issue, and about what's allowed and what isn't.

She's sure that the girl who gave the glasses to her only did because she had received them earlier and didn't like them enough to keep them. "After all, she just got married. She's bound to have tons of stuff to get rid of." That's fair enough. Even when registering, you'll always end up with a certain amount of godawful crap that is so shameful you wouldn't even visit it upon the poor. My sister-in-law received no less than four garishly painted chip and dip platters. Also this weird tapestry-style blanket with two bears all dressed up, and it was personalized. Lucky for her, two of the platters are seasonal, so she doesn't have to worry about having too many - a platter for every occcasion. Yay!

I've regifted. For decency's sake I've tried to keep it to liquor, 'cause no one minds getting booze. When I was a student I think I might've batted an eye if someone gave me a screw-top bottle of wine, but by the end of the night I would have chugged it straight from the bottle even if it had had a rat and a syringe in it.

Recently I broke my own rule and regifted a picture frame at a wedding shower. Question. Does it still count as regifting if the item in question was never actually given to me as a gift? My father won it at some sort of curling event and they would never have used it, so my mother suggested I take it to an approaching bridal shower. I rationalized the decision by reminding myself that the bride had some similar looking picture frames in her house and that I was paying a crapload to fly to Nova Scotia for the wedding. Besides, who wouldn't want a series of frames attached together like a carousel? It screams class. Or maybe it screamed "cheap ass." It was sort of hard to hear above the noise of the hen party.

I suspect that my uncle and aunt were the victims of regifting when they received a very odd cake topper. First of all, who buys someone a cake topper? Aside from one's wedding, when are you likely to need a cake topper? Hands? That's right, never. It sits on their hutch looking like an odd bit of sculpture you can't quite wrap your mind around, until you go a little closer and realize it is in fact two crystal swans kissing; their bodies sculpted in such a way so as to make them heart-shaped. Aw, how craptacular. They keep it around as a conversation piece and you can frequently hear party guests asking each other where Terry and Dianne put the statue of those "two fucking swans." They aren't named that just 'cause they hate them, either.

The rules for re-gifting should be simple and as follows:

So there you have it. Feel free to add anything I might have missed, as this list is anything but exhaustive. Plus, I love reader mail.


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