The biggest change has been that if I actually want to receive any of it I have to pony up the cash, and have you priced ponies these days? They ain’t worth crap.
@AnnaB My favorite gift is a Kindle gift card. My wife says “It’s not personal” and I’m like “Letting me buy any ebook I want without thinking of the price? That’s the most personal gift ever!”
As a child I had no money and had to rely on presents for my stuff. As an adult I know my tastes better than other people and would prefer they bought my socks so I can spend my money on the things I really want.
@UnguidedSALT This reminds me of my dad. He’s very very difficult to buy gifts for. He has very selective tastes. When he wants something, he carefully researches exactly what he wants, then buys it. There is very little he wants that he deprives himself of.
This is also why I prefer to give gift cards as gifts. When I give a gift, I want it to be something the recipient wants and in the size/color/style they prefer. I hate the idea of giving a gift, then having the person feel obligated to be sweet and cordial, no matter how far off the mark I was in selecting it. I’ve been told gift cards are a lazy way to give a gift. I disagree. It think it’s the best possible way to ensure you’ve given a gift that meets the receiver’s tastes exactly.
It reminds me of an article I ready many years ago asserting “Giving gifts is the easy part. The hard work is in receiving them.”
@ELUNO We once had a doctor exam room table box. Made the coolest house out of it, strings to pull windows shut, window in the roof to get out and sit on it (had cut the sides to make a peak roof)… my kid decorated it. The dad of one of her friends taught arch architecture and borrowed it to use in a class he taught. Unfortunately I have no photos of it that I can find. The landlord made us get rid of it because she said it would collect rats. Seriously?
I originally thought and voted the “grown-up equivalents” one, but now that I think of it, I never wanted beer or a meteor to annihilate the planet as a kid, so I guess it really has changed quite a bit.
@simplersimon@Al_Coholic For me, beer was an acquired taste. Never drank it until college, and even then I started with Long Island Tea or some such cuz the major labels tasted so bad. Today (30yr later) with the craft brew movement so strong, it might be the New Golden Age of Beer
@compunaut I still haven’t acquired the taste for it. I’ve tried dozens of brands and varieties, but still none of them appeal to me. Probably the closest I’ve come to tolerable isn’t even a craft brew. It’s mass produced swill, Dundee’s Honey Brown Light Lager.
My toys have just gotten more expensive, but they are still toys. Jeep parts, climbing camping and hiking gear, dog paraphernalia. Same stuff basically as when I was a kid. I’ve always had a dog, liked climbing hiking and camping, and as far as cars go I had a Hot Wheels collection my brother and cousins were envious of.
@PocketBrain I like having all my socks the same, so any gift socks will be worn once while you are around next, then sent to goodwill, and I will claim I wore them out if you ever ask about them.
I pretty much have everything I need and more than enough expendable income to get anything I want. I consequently don’t have a wish list. That said, I do get more pleasure in giving to my children.
My wish list contains items for my kitchen… Which I loved to cook with my mom as a kid.
It contains colorful things to make my house and yard glow. (cherry blossom solar light strings, etc.) I used to have a room covered in glowing stars.
What I would love the most this year is if me and my brother could buy annual passes to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure so we could go a few times together and ride the rollercoasters. We’ve loved the theme parks since we were kids.
I would like lots more Time.
Specifically, I would like each day to be at least 96 hours without me needing any more sleep or food or need to put in working hours than I would do in a 24 hours day.
I could also go for some sort of magical power acquisition. Tho those always seem to come with a few negatives.
On FB a while back someone posted a query, “Which would you rather have, $10 million or a time machine?” Everyone but me took the money. I thought, what we have here is a complete failure of imagination. Setting aside the fact that a judicious single use of a time machine could let you easily exceed that comparatively paltry amount, who has truly lived a life without regret? Unless that time machine comes with the sort of punitive restrictions fairy tales and horror writers are fond of, I’d chose the time machine without a second’s hesitation.
@moondrake I time machine would be excellent for making money all you have to do is go back one week and then invest based upon today’s Dow Jones the next week do the same thing
@CaptAmehrican My plan is to go back say, 100 years or even 50 years, and buy land on the outskirts of New York, LA, San Diego. It would require some research to set up a trust to pay taxes on it and leave it to my “descendant”, but I think I could pull it off and think what a few acres here and there midcity would be worth now.
@moondrake
I suppose I would choose the time machine, but with serious trepidation.
If I only had “tourist mode” without the challenge of whether to try to improve on the past, it would be simpler, but less fraught. As much as I would love a long conversation with Socrates, that seems indulgent. Does Socrates have any use or tolerance for Time Tourists? Perhaps he would be fascinated. Perhaps we would find us far too rich, and correspondingly shallow and vapid?
And I suspect most 1st world modern people would be horrified by past conditions, even as we might admire the tenacity and toughness of the people in those times.
Suppose I could go back a “fix” things to make history better - or “better”? No Lincoln assassination? No assassination of Archduke Frank Ferdinand and his wife to trigger the Great War? I suppose if I were present and thought I could stop the horrible event, I would feel compelled to try. And until I returned to the present - or the future - I’d have no idea if I had made things better. Would fewer horrible events have happened, or more of them?
Once one gets past the more obvious things to fix, the questions about my own biases would start to trouble me. Am I so fabulous that I ought to have the power to make history go me way? Sometimes, if I knew of obvious horror or suffering, I would see a clear imperative to act. What about the more subtle moral if cultural issues? Do I really know the ethical choices for all of history?
Suppose I overestimate my capacity to act and influence? Suppose I see a clear event in which I can intervene to stop horror? And suppose I’m far less competent that I’m aware of - and attempt to intervene to do good, and create a worse horror?
Most of us fantasize time travel in Time Lord terms - we are part superstar, we clearly have greater vision, insight, we can make the correct choices for the betterment of all, we won’t cause disasters, we won’t ruin our own lives or the lives of others, or create events which cause us to be trapped, either in the past, or in a present worse than the one we departed from. Are we?
There are events in my past - plenty of minor ones, some major ones - that I would love to not do at all, or do over, or do better, or make more serious amends for, as well as those things I failed to do which haunt me to some degree. If I knew I could make something that still causes me regret better - or do more to make amends - I would. But once again, with little knowledge of the long term consequences.
I suppose if I had a time machine, I would feel compelled to try to use it for good. Emphasize try. What possible harm I would be doing with my use of the time machine I could not guess and might not ever know.
And there’s the wealth angle. I hope if I had a time machine I would not use it for greed at the pure expense of other - that my wealth creation would involve some spreading it around. But hey - I can do that in the here and now. Not that I’m good at it.
What having a time machine would not free me of (and that I would not wish to be free of) is such sometimes painful self-knowledge as I possess. I have tried to live, more or less, as a good and decent person, but at times I have done harm. I have surely done harm I’m not aware of, thru lack of info, or insensitivity and lack of empathy.
“And you’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above”.
I really hate the gift aspect of Christmas it’s sort of ruins everything I wish the adults my family would be willing to stop exchanging gifts. They won’t agree to everyone should just buy for the kids and as a result I spend all of December stressing over what to get my brother and laws who both make three times what I make each and end of buying them another bland Polo shirt
@CaptAmehrican For a while we had a rule that the adult gifts had to be hand-made by the giver. The time required for those sorts of things soon allowed for the evolution to ‘no gifts for adults’.
@compunaut
In my family the adults either give each other nothing, or a book, or a bottle of wine, or something handmade, or a Starbucks gift card. Wealthier people are somewhat more likely to give to less wealthy people, but no one keeps track.
There is an informal private understanding that a recipient who didn’t give to the giver at the holidays then owes the giver some sort of personal favor or personal gesture during the following year.
So far people seem to carry gratitude, not resentment, so I guess it’s working. No one set the system up, we just kinda started to do it spontaneously. We never set up ground rules, everyone just “got it”.
PS I have gotten some wonderful books I didn’t know about, and a few very decent bottles of wine this way. I usually give books I love. So I kinda like this setup.
(the most recent book was an interesting looking one I’ve not read yet, about the American community in Paris during the jazz age.)
@CaptAmehrican My family tried that. I hated it. I live 650 miles away and have no kids. My family isn’t close, setting up Christmas plans was our only communication and it used to be the only time we spent together. I didn’t mind buying gifts for the little strangers, but it was my parents and brothers and sister I enjoyed giving gifts to. Giving a gift to my mother the only time each year I saw her was suddenly taboo. After a couple of years I just quit going there for Christmas and stayed home with my friends. It wasn’t really about gifts, it was feeling like a ghost at an event where I was being told my only role was buying gifts for 9 kids I only saw a couple of hours once a year. If you have family members who don’t have kids, consider how deciding that gifts are only for kids may make them feel marginalized. Christmas is such a sad time of year for many people, and it hits those who are alone the hardest.
@moondrake Thanks for sharing a different perspective. I should have considered other family units’ shapes/sizes.
Our family situation was more symmetric, as myself, my brother and our 2 closest cousins all have 2 kids each (and relatively close in age). For us, it’s hard enough to find heartfelt, meaningful gifts for the kids, much less the adults.
@moondrake I am the single childless one. My siblings have 2 and 3 kids plus spouses. So yeah I buy for all 9. I am close to one of my siblings and their family and not the other. The sibling I don’t have a relationship with having to buy for that whole family does nothing but point out how little we know each other every year. It just makes me sad and feel lonely
The biggest change has been that if I actually want to receive any of it I have to pony up the cash, and have you priced ponies these days? They ain’t worth crap.
Most of what I want these days is way more expensive than is reasonable for a gift, so I end up asking for cash most of the time.
Books then. Books now. Nope, hasn’t changed much.
@AnnaB My favorite gift is a Kindle gift card. My wife says “It’s not personal” and I’m like “Letting me buy any ebook I want without thinking of the price? That’s the most personal gift ever!”
@Officemonkey I ended up getting a $200 credit with Amazon about a year ago for reasons still unclear to me. I was so happy! All that Kindle joy!
@AnnaB Probably related to the publisher’s/apple price fixing lawsuit.
A lot of the same stuff, except now I don’t have time to play with any of it
Whirled peas.
I want no gifts.
@Ignorant Interesting. I’d come here to give the same answer.
I liked the Erector Sets, toy trucks, rockets, bicycle accessories and Annette Funicello.
I still like most of that.
As a child I had no money and had to rely on presents for my stuff. As an adult I know my tastes better than other people and would prefer they bought my socks so I can spend my money on the things I really want.
@UnguidedSALT I don’t really trust anyone to buy me socks, tbh…
@UnguidedSALT Good point!
@UnguidedSALT This reminds me of my dad. He’s very very difficult to buy gifts for. He has very selective tastes. When he wants something, he carefully researches exactly what he wants, then buys it. There is very little he wants that he deprives himself of.
This is also why I prefer to give gift cards as gifts. When I give a gift, I want it to be something the recipient wants and in the size/color/style they prefer. I hate the idea of giving a gift, then having the person feel obligated to be sweet and cordial, no matter how far off the mark I was in selecting it. I’ve been told gift cards are a lazy way to give a gift. I disagree. It think it’s the best possible way to ensure you’ve given a gift that meets the receiver’s tastes exactly.
It reminds me of an article I ready many years ago asserting “Giving gifts is the easy part. The hard work is in receiving them.”
Best.Toy.Ever.
@ELUNO You’re a cat, aren’t you?
/youtube Maru boxes
@narfcake I have cat reflexes, yes. But also the imagination of a child:
@ELUNO We once had a doctor exam room table box. Made the coolest house out of it, strings to pull windows shut, window in the roof to get out and sit on it (had cut the sides to make a peak roof)… my kid decorated it. The dad of one of her friends taught arch architecture and borrowed it to use in a class he taught. Unfortunately I have no photos of it that I can find. The landlord made us get rid of it because she said it would collect rats. Seriously?
It’s my birthday next week and all I want is a remote control car! Does that answer the question well enough?
@luvche21
You want a remote control carl?
Would that be, specifically, a remote control model, @carl669?
Cool!
My dreams are dead. Dreams of the dead in a world of death.
Let’s look, shall we?
Didn’t care about light bulbs when I was a kid. But aside from that it’s all about music so that hasn’t changed since the 70s.
Speaking of me in the 70s, a friend from junior high just posted this on Facebook.
@SSteve
OMG.
We are all in fear of the Ghost of Dorkster Past.
I originally thought and voted the “grown-up equivalents” one, but now that I think of it, I never wanted beer or a meteor to annihilate the planet as a kid, so I guess it really has changed quite a bit.
@Al_Coholic you didn’t want beer as a kid? I mean, I never put it on the list for Santa, but still.
@simplersimon Not when I was really young. By my teenage years, yes.
@simplersimon @Al_Coholic For me, beer was an acquired taste. Never drank it until college, and even then I started with Long Island Tea or some such cuz the major labels tasted so bad. Today (30yr later) with the craft brew movement so strong, it might be the New Golden Age of Beer
@compunaut I still haven’t acquired the taste for it. I’ve tried dozens of brands and varieties, but still none of them appeal to me. Probably the closest I’ve come to tolerable isn’t even a craft brew. It’s mass produced swill, Dundee’s Honey Brown Light Lager.
My toys have just gotten more expensive, but they are still toys. Jeep parts, climbing camping and hiking gear, dog paraphernalia. Same stuff basically as when I was a kid. I’ve always had a dog, liked climbing hiking and camping, and as far as cars go I had a Hot Wheels collection my brother and cousins were envious of.
I have always said that you have truly reached adulthood when you admit that you appreciate some really good socks.
@PocketBrain I like having all my socks the same, so any gift socks will be worn once while you are around next, then sent to goodwill, and I will claim I wore them out if you ever ask about them.
@simplersimon
I pretty much have everything I need and more than enough expendable income to get anything I want. I consequently don’t have a wish list. That said, I do get more pleasure in giving to my children.
My wish list contains items for my kitchen… Which I loved to cook with my mom as a kid.
It contains colorful things to make my house and yard glow. (cherry blossom solar light strings, etc.) I used to have a room covered in glowing stars.
What I would love the most this year is if me and my brother could buy annual passes to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure so we could go a few times together and ride the rollercoasters. We’ve loved the theme parks since we were kids.
Same thing since I was eight: give me the green stuff and save us both the stress.
The only things I really want are things no one can give me. Mundane material things I buy for myself.
I would like lots more Time.
Specifically, I would like each day to be at least 96 hours without me needing any more sleep or food or need to put in working hours than I would do in a 24 hours day.
I could also go for some sort of magical power acquisition. Tho those always seem to come with a few negatives.
/giphy Dorian Gray
@f00l me too.
On FB a while back someone posted a query, “Which would you rather have, $10 million or a time machine?” Everyone but me took the money. I thought, what we have here is a complete failure of imagination. Setting aside the fact that a judicious single use of a time machine could let you easily exceed that comparatively paltry amount, who has truly lived a life without regret? Unless that time machine comes with the sort of punitive restrictions fairy tales and horror writers are fond of, I’d chose the time machine without a second’s hesitation.
@moondrake I time machine would be excellent for making money all you have to do is go back one week and then invest based upon today’s Dow Jones the next week do the same thing
@CaptAmehrican My plan is to go back say, 100 years or even 50 years, and buy land on the outskirts of New York, LA, San Diego. It would require some research to set up a trust to pay taxes on it and leave it to my “descendant”, but I think I could pull it off and think what a few acres here and there midcity would be worth now.
@moondrake
I suppose I would choose the time machine, but with serious trepidation.
If I only had “tourist mode” without the challenge of whether to try to improve on the past, it would be simpler, but less fraught. As much as I would love a long conversation with Socrates, that seems indulgent. Does Socrates have any use or tolerance for Time Tourists? Perhaps he would be fascinated. Perhaps we would find us far too rich, and correspondingly shallow and vapid?
And I suspect most 1st world modern people would be horrified by past conditions, even as we might admire the tenacity and toughness of the people in those times.
Suppose I could go back a “fix” things to make history better - or “better”? No Lincoln assassination? No assassination of Archduke Frank Ferdinand and his wife to trigger the Great War? I suppose if I were present and thought I could stop the horrible event, I would feel compelled to try. And until I returned to the present - or the future - I’d have no idea if I had made things better. Would fewer horrible events have happened, or more of them?
Once one gets past the more obvious things to fix, the questions about my own biases would start to trouble me. Am I so fabulous that I ought to have the power to make history go me way? Sometimes, if I knew of obvious horror or suffering, I would see a clear imperative to act. What about the more subtle moral if cultural issues? Do I really know the ethical choices for all of history?
Suppose I overestimate my capacity to act and influence? Suppose I see a clear event in which I can intervene to stop horror? And suppose I’m far less competent that I’m aware of - and attempt to intervene to do good, and create a worse horror?
Most of us fantasize time travel in Time Lord terms - we are part superstar, we clearly have greater vision, insight, we can make the correct choices for the betterment of all, we won’t cause disasters, we won’t ruin our own lives or the lives of others, or create events which cause us to be trapped, either in the past, or in a present worse than the one we departed from. Are we?
There are events in my past - plenty of minor ones, some major ones - that I would love to not do at all, or do over, or do better, or make more serious amends for, as well as those things I failed to do which haunt me to some degree. If I knew I could make something that still causes me regret better - or do more to make amends - I would. But once again, with little knowledge of the long term consequences.
I suppose if I had a time machine, I would feel compelled to try to use it for good. Emphasize try. What possible harm I would be doing with my use of the time machine I could not guess and might not ever know.
And there’s the wealth angle. I hope if I had a time machine I would not use it for greed at the pure expense of other - that my wealth creation would involve some spreading it around. But hey - I can do that in the here and now. Not that I’m good at it.
What having a time machine would not free me of (and that I would not wish to be free of) is such sometimes painful self-knowledge as I possess. I have tried to live, more or less, as a good and decent person, but at times I have done harm. I have surely done harm I’m not aware of, thru lack of info, or insensitivity and lack of empathy.
“And you’ve got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above”.
I really hate the gift aspect of Christmas it’s sort of ruins everything I wish the adults my family would be willing to stop exchanging gifts. They won’t agree to everyone should just buy for the kids and as a result I spend all of December stressing over what to get my brother and laws who both make three times what I make each and end of buying them another bland Polo shirt
@CaptAmehrican For a while we had a rule that the adult gifts had to be hand-made by the giver. The time required for those sorts of things soon allowed for the evolution to ‘no gifts for adults’.
@compunaut
In my family the adults either give each other nothing, or a book, or a bottle of wine, or something handmade, or a Starbucks gift card. Wealthier people are somewhat more likely to give to less wealthy people, but no one keeps track.
There is an informal private understanding that a recipient who didn’t give to the giver at the holidays then owes the giver some sort of personal favor or personal gesture during the following year.
So far people seem to carry gratitude, not resentment, so I guess it’s working. No one set the system up, we just kinda started to do it spontaneously. We never set up ground rules, everyone just “got it”.
PS I have gotten some wonderful books I didn’t know about, and a few very decent bottles of wine this way. I usually give books I love. So I kinda like this setup.
(the most recent book was an interesting looking one I’ve not read yet, about the American community in Paris during the jazz age.)
@CaptAmehrican My family tried that. I hated it. I live 650 miles away and have no kids. My family isn’t close, setting up Christmas plans was our only communication and it used to be the only time we spent together. I didn’t mind buying gifts for the little strangers, but it was my parents and brothers and sister I enjoyed giving gifts to. Giving a gift to my mother the only time each year I saw her was suddenly taboo. After a couple of years I just quit going there for Christmas and stayed home with my friends. It wasn’t really about gifts, it was feeling like a ghost at an event where I was being told my only role was buying gifts for 9 kids I only saw a couple of hours once a year. If you have family members who don’t have kids, consider how deciding that gifts are only for kids may make them feel marginalized. Christmas is such a sad time of year for many people, and it hits those who are alone the hardest.
@moondrake Thanks for sharing a different perspective. I should have considered other family units’ shapes/sizes.
Our family situation was more symmetric, as myself, my brother and our 2 closest cousins all have 2 kids each (and relatively close in age). For us, it’s hard enough to find heartfelt, meaningful gifts for the kids, much less the adults.
@moondrake I am the single childless one. My siblings have 2 and 3 kids plus spouses. So yeah I buy for all 9. I am close to one of my siblings and their family and not the other. The sibling I don’t have a relationship with having to buy for that whole family does nothing but point out how little we know each other every year. It just makes me sad and feel lonely