Letters to the Editor
-
My solution....
Most people give gifts they, themselves would like to get. I suggest that "Please, Mom" gives his own mother a nice ladies blouse....every Christmas. She will either get the hint, and change it up, or remain oblivious and be proud she raised such a thoughtful son. Either way, it's not the worst problem to have.
-
Not so bad...
Considering the animosity between Not Another Shirt and his parents (it sounds as if he's waiting for them to die) getting a dress shirt every year isn't so bad. He could give the shirts to charity and feel good, give them to someone else for Christmas, or even try to sell them if he's that broke. It sounds like he's as stuck in his self-pity as his parents are in giving him that shirt.
-
Please Mom is a fool...
At 50, why does he give a shit what his old mom buys him for Christmas? - and Tennis' answer shows why I'll never buy a premium subscription - what silly nonsense - here you have a whining old fool complaining about a useless gift he gets every year and instead of just ignoring the gift or tossing it or giving it to a homeless guy, he lets these gift pile up with his resentment - what an idiot...
-
He's not alone
My husband also received a dress shirt from his mother every Christmas for years. His brother also got one, as did the brothers-in-law. Just to show that her sons are special, she also got the sons underwear. To top it off, the shirt was always the wrong size.
Someone finally gave her the word to get something else, so she switched to casual shirts (although I think she has since reverted to the dress shirt). Meanwhile, her daughters get varied individual gifts. The daughters-in-law usually get nice gifts similar to each other (which makes good sense) but not the same thing every year.
Although it kind of hurt my husband's feelings to keep getting such an impersonal gift (it was always a really boring and clearly not pricey shirt), I don't think my mother-in-law meant anything bad by it. She has a large family and a lot of gifts to buy. But I think she just doesn't think of men as beings who think about gifts or care much about them. Certainly her husband never seemed to expend much effort on gift giving, usually buying whatever a daughter said their mother wanted. Also, I can't recall a time when my husband ever came up with the gift idea for my mother-in-law, unless she needed some technology. Maybe he reaps what he sows.
So, to the writer: maybe don't take it so personally. Second, how much thought do you put into gifts you get for her? And finally, do what we do: give the shirt to charity, still in its packaging, and take some pleasure in the thought that someone might enjoy wearing the fresh new shirt.
-
oh please
maybe this guy wouldn't be so underemployed if he wore a nice shirt now and then!
-
Dress shirts and family politics.....
If his mother is truly, as he says, narcissistic. The best thing he could do to take revenge on her, and have good come of it, is to donate it to an association that provides interview-worthy clothes to the poor and homeless and then send a thank-you note detailing his benevolent gesture and how his mother's thoughtfulness has enabled him to be so generous. Especially if the shirts are still lying around in their boxes unworn doing noone any good.
-
Another dress shirt
I can understand where this guy is coming from. He's in pain about it because it probably symbolizes all that he's wanted from his parents, asked for, and never gotten. It brings up all the disappointments and makes him feel small and unimportant. However, at 50, it's time to stop expecting our parents to fulfill our basic needs of feeling special and important. Adults have a responsibility to this for themselves. I remember my mother giving me an ugly shirt for some occassion. Then she died. I still have the shirt (30 years later) and I think that its no-iron, lightweight, loose fit is really comfortable now. I think of her practicality and her attempts to take care of me that I didn't notice at the time.
-
And another thing...
Others have already made all the practical suggestions that occurred to me (stop whining and either wear the damn shirts or give them to charity), but how can anyone in a post-Esther Lederer world insist, as this advice-seeker has, that he or she is too poor to afford counseling?
Advice columnists have been pounding home for decades the fact that affordable, sliding-scale or free counseling exists almost everywhere in the United States of America. If you don't want counseling, fine -- but don't use the excuse that you can't afford it. Of course, that excuse sounds better than "I'd rather whine about my problems than fix them".
As to the question of what his parent's "behavior" means: who cares? Someday you'll be dying and/or she'll be dead and, one hopes, this issue will be the farthest thing from your mind. Counseling will go a long way towards making that possible by helping you get your priorities in order now.
-
Please, Mom, please: Not another dress shirt!
Mom is 80 years old, for god's sake. (1) She is not going to change; (2) you can't expect her to expend the energy to find a suitable gift. I don't mean to be cruel, but his mom's gift choice should be the very least of his worries. And you can't keep blaming your parents at age 50 for supposedly screwing you up.
-
Seems to me
Cary's suggestion that it's somehow symbolic seems likely. If not to Mom, then to the son. Obviously if he's chosen this as the Ultimate Symbol of Mom's Insanity, it means a lot more to him than just another dress shirt, it's tangible evidence of something that's more pervasive and bothersome to him. My own mom gives me unsuitable gifts, things that are impersonal or just not My Thing, and at times it seems she's wanting me to be a kid again and not the late 30's adult -- but her idea of a relationship seems to resemble something no mature adult would recognize. Conversations with her are limited to things she's interested in, things she dislikes (which includes many things that I enjoy or appreciate, but she never knows about that because again, all about her), or things that confuse her. I can bring up my own life but she's not interested in details. When I went back to college for grad school it took her most of a year to even bother asking what my major was. That hurt, too. It's more important that I know everything she's done, down to watering the trees in the yard, than for her to know me as a person.
It was my choice to limit contact with her, and I know that she will not understand why, because I have tried to explain it to her before. She listens to the voices in her own head more than she'll ever listen to me. It's just something I have to live with, if I'm to spend any time with her at all.