Free Gift With Purpose

By the time you are marrying your third "soul mate" the delusion that people are happy for you and want to demonstrate this feeling by purchasing a Cuisinart should be thoroughly shattered. However it has come to my attention that an alarming and ill-mannered how-can-I-get-a-gift-out-of-this trend is developing in our society. People now expect gifts for every conceivable occasion from the traditional (weddings, graduations) to the mundane (dogs birthday, babys first poop.) Events that have never before been recognized as gift-giving occasions now demand parody and no one is standing up to this trend for fear of being labeled cheap, selfish, or worst of all, politically incorrect. Well, I, dear readers, have no such fear. I will be the lone voice of reason yet again and set so many of you straight on this subject.

What it boils down to, like everything else in life, is that people are generally greedy and lazy. Thus, the advent of the gift registry. Anything you want but dont have? Anything at all? Register for it! A first marriage and a first baby require a slew of accoutrements, most of which the young people involved would have no reason to acquire beforehand. These are the only two occasions for which it is acceptable to register. Registering for your second, third...twelfth baby is simply, rude. The very same stroller, playpen and diaper bag that were good enough for your first baby should be good enough for all the rest. If they are not, or if you simply cannot afford all the new things you think Jr. needs, here's an idea: stop having kids.

The wedding registry is even worse. For some reason, weddings, even second and third weddings have become a gift-giving free-for-all. People have no shame when it comes to what they will ask people to buy them. Originally, the wedding registry was intended to provide the couple with matching sets of dishes and linens. Now, I see registries that are dozens of pages long listing everything from margarita machines to nose-hair trimmers. I imagine these couples running through the stores, scanning guns in hand, picking out everything they think they may ever want, like sugar-filled children cashing in Skee-ball tickets. That same opportunistic mindset has snowballed into this greedy gifting frenzy.

Perhaps the greatest offense is when people register way out of their league. It is such an obvious affront to guests to be asked to buy uber-expensive gifts, especially for the couple known to frequent Wal*Mart and Sears when shopping for themselves.

Recently, a woman in my office asked us all to give her gift cards to places like florists and bakeries so she could use them to pay for her wedding day expenses. A few of the bleeding hearts in this department decided we should also include gift cards to the local movie theatre and restraunts since the couple could not afford a honeymoon either. You know what I do when I want to do something I cant afford? I save up for it or I get over it. I dont ask other people to host my whims. By the way, this was her 3rd wedding. I bought her exactly zero dollars worth of gift cards and hoped that someone would question my motives. No one did, so I wrote this.