Best Gift Ever

Weekend Assignment # 350: Best. Gift. Ever.
What is the best gift you've ever gotten from anyone?

Extra Credit: To the best of your recollection, what is the best gift you ever gave someone else?

Funny enough that I literally just used this question for a poll in my employee newsletter. One Christmas, my parents gave me a car. They didn't wrap it in a bow in the driveway or anything. They wrapped a new key chain in a box and included a note the box that said, "we'll start looking in January". I didn't get the message.

I had lost my keys several months before and they had been on a gorgeous Gucci key chain. Did they mean they would help me find a great new key chain? Random. And there was so much commotion that neither of my parents had seen me open the gift.

So the gift-madness had ended when my mother realized that she hadn't seen me open (or heard me scream) that particular box. So she told me. New car.

I said, "Yeah, right." And turned back to my book or whatever.

"No, really."

Yeah. Good times. I kept that Blazer for ten years and still miss it.

The best gift I ever gave was another goofy tale. My mother had made Christmas stockings for my brother and me when we were kids. The Snoopy ones made from felt. Later on, when we were older, she cross-stitched new stockings. My Snoopy stocking survived and Scott's was lost. It was a tragedy. But the Internet is a wonderful thing and a couple of years ago I found a kit to make his old stocking on Ebay. So I spent the required bloody fortune and made it for him. 

Scott, who tears all his packages open like a five year old, opened that gift. Didn't look at the tag. He got all excited and started thanking our mother. She corrected him, but there is steam coming out of my ears even now.