Terrible Mother’s Day Gifts

With the world’s most important day almost upon us, I would like to take this time to help out any last minute shoppers.  My email box has been stuffed to the e-rim with offers and suggestions from helpful merchants assuring that their product is exactly what mom wants.  But take it from me, please, most of these merchants are wrong.  Really, really wrong.

Big 5 Sporting goods would like you to get the mom in your life running shoes

Do not do this.  “But the mom in my life is super sporty!” you say.  Doesn’t matter, this is not the time for you to intimate in any way that she needs to exercise.

Here’s one from Home Depot.

First of all, don’t shop for the woman in your life at Home Depot.  It says “I had to pick up caulk and remembered I also had to get you a gift.”  Secondly, does the “mom” in this photo look like she’s enjoying herself?  Or does this “mom” look like she got a bag of manure for Mother’s Day and is now cultivating a batch of pink-blooming hemlock that she will slowly be introducing into your diet?

Now some of you out there are saying “Come on, of course we won’t shop at Big 5 or Home Depot for Mother’s Day.  We’re not suffering from a brain clot!”  Good, but even the most mom-friendly-seeming of retailers can trip you up.

Tiffany & Co. would never do such a thing, right?!  Anything that comes in the blue box is perfect for mom!  Even if it’s a pen?

Nope.  Not if it’s a pen.  In the words of Lloyd Dobler “I gave her my heart and she gave me a pen?!”  Don’t make your mom stand outside your bedroom window with a boombox playing your favorite lullaby that she sang to you no less that 1,407,682 times.  Don’t make her do it.

Red Envelope, the bastion of all gifts personal-but-not-too-personal, which is actually perfect for the mother-in-law in your life because you honestly have no idea what she does or doesn’t like and it comes in a really nice box, can even trip you up.  But I promise you even if you don’t know what she likes, there is no mother-in-law out there who would like a “Thumb Pot.”

Even if it’s a Turtle Thumb Pot.  “What’s a thumb pot” you ask?  Honestly, it doesn’t matter.  She doesn’t want this.  No one wants this.

Nor does any mom want diarrhea for Mother’s Day.  Please cross off your list a brunch at El Torito, a Groupon for 15 Burgers at 5 Guys, or this sausage and cheese box Hickory Farms thinks makes a perfect mother’s day gift.

Yes, it’s true, at least one time a mom had to like a sausage in a box to get where she is today, but now she’s tired, and has a headache, and the kids are still up, and she ran out of wine, so there’s no interest in your sausage gift.  Maybe you could give yourself the sausage gift and that would be gift enough.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s out there.  I wish for you a day of rest, relaxation, and exuhultation.

But if for any reason your husbands or children really screw the pooch this year, feel free to send me a pic or description and I’ll be happy to publicly skewer them so they never make this mistake again.

xxoo

Katy McCaffrey (Contributing Editor, Los Angeles)

Katy is a mother, a wife, and a TV producer, mostly in that order. Once she wrote some sarcastic things next to some pictures a guy took with her stolen iPhone. She was then semi-well known for three days afterwards. If You Must Know is what’s happened to her since then.

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