Regifting

My family has a funny, but brilliant, way of trying not to hurt people's feelings when they receive gifts they absolutely loathe. Instead of risking hurting the gifter's feelings (we're really very nice people and we love giving gifts so the last thing we want is for someone to have that "oh dear god, my present was horrible!" feeling) and having them spot their gift elsewhere, say by regifting or donating it to one of our local thrift stores, we find a spot we know they will never ever go. I'm talking a spot they may even fear! Then we bury, shove, throw, whatever action is appropriate here, the object into said location.

Case in point: I am writing this on a chilly Tuesday morning. I recently returned from trip to Idaho and while there found a robe in my Granddad's shed. It has this fantastic white pattern on it that is much like two arcs interweaving. It's a tiny white pattern on black material. There is a bit of sunfading on the bottom of the robe which I really like. It means it has spent some time aging. I thought it might be my Grandmother's because my Granddad had this beloved blue robe that you couldn't pry away from him. My Grandmother was quite classy and this robe is a piece of fantastic work. I thought maybe he put it in this box in his precious shed, along with the bulging can of 40 year old Buckhorn Beer he forgot to drink, to save it from the trips to Goodwill or whatever when she died of Leukemia when I was about two.

When I returned to my Uncle's house, though, to show off my fabulous prize (you can wear this robe with jeans, too! It's fucking cool!) my aunt Barbara, his wife, not my Aunt Barb, his sister, inspected it and said, "Oh yes. This is the famous robe."

Puzzled, I said, "Famous robe?"

She laughed and said, "Yes. From Ruth."

After I threw up a little in my mouth and finished being shocked at Ruth's, my grandfather's somewhat pixilated and wholly irritating female companion toward the end of his days, odd winning in the lottery of taste, I said, "I found this in the shed."

My Aunt lost it and had to brace herself. We both suddenly realized my Granddad, the kindest man on Earth, who was constantly fighting off Ruth's efforts to dress him (and at one point enraged the entire family across the nation by getting it into her head that she was going to redecorate my Grandmother's curtains which she was in the middle of making when she died and my Aunt Barb finished. They are somewhat of a family favorite and we all collectively hissed and bore our teeth from whatever state we were in, claws extended and ready to attack if she touched Grandberta's curtains or the wallpaper that so extraordinarily matched them). This robe was apparently, at one point, the source of a large shenanigans wherein Ruth decided Granddad's precious blue robe would no longer suffice. Mind you he was in his nineties. Personally, I don't think this is the time to be caring whether your blue robe is getting threadbare as long as it covers things when family and friends are over, you know? Which it did.

Our beloved patriarch apparently, in the end, to keep peace, accepted the robe and took a stroll out to the shed, not unusual at all and Ruth certainly wasn't about to go out there--she barely tolerated his amazing house anyway. She liked to carry pictures of her ginormous eyesore of a residence in her wallet, not her "boys", which she referred to as her mansion but really was just a large home with a stuffed dog, as in taxidermy, not child's toy, in her sitting room where no one ever sat. I slept in the Lime Green Room once and really when I say slept I mean I say I lay on my back with my eyes wide open for several hours until the sun came up and we could leave.

Once out in the shed, we pieced together, he just shoved it in some box, maybe fiddle with some crap out there like he liked to do, then went back inside and ate some nut bread or called someone down the street. Maybe he poked at the woodstove or called my Uncle and told him not to let my Cousin Jeff into the liquor cabinet or into his Toblerone cache, which he kept for his rocky road candy making.

In the end, I am thoroughly enjoying the robe. Ruth never saw it again. Maybe from wherever she is now, she can see me sitting, telling you this story and is twisting her giant rings and sighing heavily in irritation.

Whatever.

I like it. Someone's enjoying the piss out of it.