The No Gift Gift


Dear Diary …

I think I’m to the point now where I’m just going to tell people not to get me gifts anymore. And this isn’t some high and mighty “I have everything I need, please give to the less fortunate.” I DON’T have everything and I need, and I DO want more stuff, but now my gifts don’t even end up being gifts anymore, so there’s really no point.

What am I talking about? This …

Now when you’re an adult, it’s really hard when somebody puts you on the spot and says, “So what do you want for your birthday?” I mean, when you’re five years old you can immediately launch into a laundry list of things you want. Heck, I think my son started his Christmas list for this year roughly around 2pm on Christmas Day last year. There’s ALWAYS something you want when you’re five.

But when you’re an adult, it’s a lot harder. Especially because a lot of the things you want that are on the top of your head are just too dang expensive to be a gift.

“Hey want do you want for your birthday?”

“A car. I want a car.”

And yeah … that doesn’t really fly unless you’re married to guy who owns Facebook.

So really what I thought would be the perfect gift for me would be Amazon gift cards. That way if I did see something I wanted, I could just order it with my gift card. Or … if I wanted a really high ticket item, I could just collect these various gift cards, let them add up, and then use them.

Yeah … that would be a perfect plan. If I was the only person on earth. Problem is … I have family. Family who have access to my Amazon account. And they take my gift card. Every … single … time.

This year I got a $25 Amazon gift card for my birthday. Guess what I got myself?

A remote control car for a kid’s birthday party, and then with the remaining balance my Mom took it and bought a cookbook.

What the hell man?

“Oh I think maybe I owe you money … it said something about there being a credit on your account?”

Uhhh … yeah. That was mine.

Here’s the part that drives me crazy … you don’t HAVE to use the gift card balance. You can always opt out of it and pay in full. But they never do that. They just take my gift card and say “Oh … sooorrrry.”

And look … I understand that in a lot of ways this makes no sense at all, because you can easily just argue, “Yeah well you still have that $25, because otherwise you would’ve paid money for that kid birthday gift,” but I think you and I both know that it never actually FEELS that way if I go and buy something else after the fact. The gift card feels like free money. The gift after the fact does not.

I seriously might need to just set up my own secret secondary Amazon account. I’m not cheating in my life. I’m not lying about anything. I just need to hide all my gift cards from everybody I know . Otherwise I ain’t never gettin’ another present again in my life!

Till next time Diary … I say … Goodbye