The gift needs to be able to come off as a genuine gift so there’s some plausible deniability…

Edit: Just so it’s clear, this is purely hypothetical. I just thought of the idea and thought it would be funny to see what a random person on Lemmy might think. This isn’t a serious request and none of the suggestions will ever actually be used.

  • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
    62·
    7 days ago

    My personality disordered MIL is an artist at giving insulting gifts. An absolute master. She likes to pretend she is very poor, although isn’t, and she volunteered at a Catholic charity shop for used goods, so she would take home armloads of used crap donated from the homes of deceased elderly people and would give them as gifts, none of which was any use to anyone and was quietly donated elsewhere afterwards. But she also likes to give you weird things that are basically trash, not because she can’t afford gifts, but just to get negative attention and make people upset.

    1. She gave me her old used bathrobe as a Christmas gift, which was pretty threadbare, and made sure to call me the next day to tell me it had been hers, which I had consigned to the garbage because it wasn’t even really fit for donation.
    2. She gave her only granddaughter an old vitamin bottle filled with dish soap and a discarded bubble wand she had found in the park. Not even one dollar for her grandchild would be spent, hell the dish soap probably cost more than buying a bubble blowing kit from the dollar store would.
    3. She gave my BIL a sandwich baggie filled with used discarded golf tees that she had picked up walking the public course, all chipped and full of dirt. Another item easily found at the dollar store.
    4. Years later her only grandchild had developed an eating disorder after being bitten on the face by a pit bull and needing several surgeries to repair as she was depressed about her appearance, poor kid. My MIL immediately went out and bought herself some size XXXXL pyjamas, and then dramatically announced to her grandchild’s mother/her daughter that they were too big and she was going to give them to her grandchild, who is way thinner than her and would never fit them. We intervened and told her she was not to do that, and she immediately began squawking about what she could possibly do with them now. The whole point, if you don’t speak personality disorder, was that she bought them simply to give them to her to send her a message that she was fat, even though she was absolutely not, and to also upset her daughter.

    Top tier personality disorder behaviour really.

      • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
        20·
        7 days ago

        She’s so much worse too. Has called me by the wrong name for almost 30 years on purpose. Her one daughter for married when West Nile virus was a big thing, and had an outdoor wedding, and MIL wore a bush helmet with mosquito netting over top in all of the photos just to get attention. It’s quite psychotic really…

        • devAlot@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          7 days ago

          Hahaha my god you should make a collage out of those photos of her, I’d love to see these.

          Also, sorry for what you went through. My birth mother is a narcissist, so I can relate. It can be quite liberating to have fun at their expense, though!

        • lud@lemm.ee
          11·
          7 days ago

          I wonder why and how it comes that someone acts like that. Sure, be rude or whatever. But she seems borderline cruel for absolutely no reason whatsoever except for I assume her own entertainment.

          Does one always act like that or does it come with time?

          • BonesOfTheMoon@lemmy.world
            13·
            7 days ago

            She had a childhood where she didn’t have much but I don’t think her family life was unhappy. We think she was institutionalized for mental illness in 1970 and dropped my SO into the care of his aunt and uncle. When she came to pick him up a year later he didn’t remember her, of course, being a baby, and that was distressing for her and probably made him very detached from her, because those primal bonds are so important. She had a bad relationship with her husband but it seemed to be because she was continually provoking him when he actually was home, which wasn’t hardly at all because of his job. Like I would not say she had it easy, but also that a lot of things end up the way they do for her because she enjoys what I call stick poking. She has done incredibly provocative things to provoke conflict between her children, for example not telling daughter #1 that daughter #2 was having an engagement party, but then ensuring to post photos on Facebook the very next day. Or she’d invite us over for dinner and then sit inside and talk to nobody while we prepared all the food on the barbecue and just sat around trying to figure out why we were there. She won’t have a garbage can in her house and instead walks it all over to the park trash can, which to me is insane.

            I’m honestly not sure you could even diagnose her with anything really, she seems to like upsetting people and making them fight and it gives her pure pleasure to do that. I’ve never seen her smile except when she got a rise out of someone, which makes her smile like it’s her birthday. Like it’s an abnormal way of being in the world, but it doesn’t seem to be from trauma or being neurodivergent, she just really likes to seem to be an asshole as much as possible because she likes it. That’s my take on her. It’s just what she likes to do.