One of my family’s favorite stories to tell at Christmas time is about my 3-year-old self’s guide to gift giving:
No Gift? No Worries! 3-year-old Jo’s guide to gift giving
- Who do you need to give the gift to? (Specifically, you need to know their name for this to work.)
- Go out into your back yard and search around. If you don’t have a back yard, go to a park with trees.
- Look for and find a good piece of bark. Now, this step is crucial. Your bark needs to be breakable into a smallish size (about the size of the really big iPhones). And it needs to be thick enough that you can carve into the face of it without it breaking apart.
- Hand the bark to your older siblings, tell them to carve your person’s name into the bark with their super cool swiss army pocket knives.
- Once they are finished, inspect their work.
- Wrap present.
- Sign it with you name and your siblings name.
- Be cute enough that you get most of the credit for the gift.
- Try not to suggest this gift giving method to the recipient of your gift before they’ve opened your gift. It may ruin their surprise.
I’m not sure how successful you’ll be with this method as grown adults, but it was very effective as a toddler. My mom still has her piece of bark that says “MOm” on it sitting on her dresser 23 Christmases later. So, obviously, it works sometimes.
Jo O’Hanlon is an adventurer and storyteller. She tries to be honest about the ugly and hard parts of life, and the beautiful parts too. This blog is one of the places she shares her thoughts and stories.
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