Day Four- 1/4/11 Sending Un-Care Packages

Day Four: 1/4/11
New Thing: Sending Un-Care Packages
Inspiration: Mama D.
Cost: About $10.00 in postage for two packages
Time: about 5 minutes prep time and 5 minutes in the post office.
Bottom Line: Just call me Debbie! 

Reflection: Today’s challenge was inspired by my mother. My mother is a champion at finding little things that might seem like crap to the untrained eye, and turning them into the perfect gag-gift. Often, these items are things that might otherwise have gone in the trash, but are given new life by my mother’s expert application of her craft. To be sure, these items remain crap; but crap that is given in just the right sarcastic note of love.

For example, I remember receiving what I thought was my first care package from my mother as a freshman in college. Eager with anticipation, I brought it back to my room, sure that it would be filled with goodies like cookies, candies, maybe a new pair of socks if I was lucky. I even began bragging to the girls in my hall about the care package, imagining that it would make me popular beyond my current state because of what I might share out of its bounty.  

Imagine my surprise upon opening the box when I found that I was not, in fact, a recipient of a care package—but of an un-care package. In place of the anticipated candies, there was a can of bread. You read that correctly—a can of bread. Up until that moment, I did not even know that this existed. Yet, the ten-year-old date stamp on the can told me that this must have been in our pantry for at least as many years, so I am not sure how I could have been caught so unawares. But there I was--mouth agape, holding my new can of bread. I hesitantly continued with the package. There were cookies, alright. However, they were an already opened bag of my mother’s favorites and only contained two lonely ones at the bottom. In place of the highly anticipated socks, there was my mother’s crowing “gift”—the package’s final item.  It was, without a doubt, the most uncomfortable and unflattering sweater “dress” known to man. The color was a cross between pea green, brown, and (what I called) snellow. I am fairly certain that it had been woven out of shards of glass and old Chinese newspapers. As for the form, I believe that they simply used a potato sack for the pattern. And to top it all off, it was 5 sizes too big and the most sweat inducing garment I have ever had the misfortune to wear (even if it was only for 4 seconds.)

Now, to the layman, this may seem a rather ungenerous package to send to one’s daughter. But I loved it. It even had the desired effect of increasing my popularity since the girls on the floor were so horrified by the “dress” that they all lined up to take their picture in it. It was that big and that ugly. Any mother can send cookies—but only my mother can send love via useless junk.

So in that spirit, I am sending two of my dearest friends their own “un-care” packages. I thought it was high time to take up this family art-form. They even contain a few items that my mother gave me in my stocking this year including a giant pickle named “The Portly.” If a pickle that comes with its own weird nick-name does not inspire Christmas joy, then truly nothing will. The two women who will receive these un-care packages have been chosen because they too know the love that can only be expressed through sarcastic gifts. They are two of the best people I know and deserve all the love via useless crap in the world.

(Kara and Lindsay, if you did not figure out that they are for you by now, then maybe you are not in fact the ones who should be receiving “wacky glasses”, farting silly putty, and a fairy doll that looks like an elderly prostitute who has been smoking since she was 10. But I think you are.)