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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell. In the US, the average consumer spent approximately $641 on gifts for family, friends, and coworkers in 2024. And I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.
Eraser boogers. I don’t know what you call them, but I call them eraser boogers. It’s those little shavings that come off of your eraser when you’re, well, erasing. It’s the little remnants left behind by taking care of mistakes. I’m a pencil guy. I don’t know if it’s the tactile feel of the lead scratching across paper versus the smooth glide of pen ink, but I much prefer pencil. Wooden pencils are my favorite, but I go through those much too quickly, so I’ve moved to using mechanical pencils. But I have always preferred the pencil over the pen. I’ve even said that I think the pencil might be the greatest invention man has ever created.
When I was a store manager in Wichita Falls, my book department head was Jason. Jason was fantastic. He and I still remain friends to this day. He’s a pastor and I pray for him and his ministry every day, but in those days, he was my book department lead. I’ve mentioned in the past that I had a difficult time organizing my desk when I was a store manager. And one of those things that particularly drove Jason insane was eraser boogers. He would come into my office and see remnants of eraser boogers on my desk and it would drive him crazy.
Of course, I would clean them up and try to keep them taken care of, but every once in a while I’d miss some and he would always notice them. And so it kind of became a running joke with us. In fact, one time, I created a big pile of eraser boogers and kind of hid them a little bit on my desk and called him into my office for nothing at all. I just wanted to see how long it would take during our conversation for him to not only notice the eraser burgers, but do something about it. How long would it take his OCD to kick in? Sure enough, it only took a moment for him to notice and do something about it. It ended up making a lasting memory for the two of us. In fact, he and I were recently chatting and he’s the one that reminded me of that story.
Jason had a philosophy that the perfect gift was something that represented both the giver and the receiver. That is, something that spoke to the relationship that the two shared or something that they both enjoyed, a memory that they had, or something like that. It was something that represented in some way both the giver and the receiver. And those are hard gifts to give. When he first told me that, I thought, well, that might be easy on occasion, but ongoing? That might be very difficult. In fact, I think it is difficult.
But that was his philosophy for every gift he gave. He tried to find something that represented both he and the person that he was giving it to. I took his philosophy to heart, and after I moved to corporate, one day I filled an envelope full of eraser boogers and put it in the store mailbox… and waited. Sure enough, a few days later, he called me laughing hysterically at the thoughtful gift I had given him of eraser boogers and how it represented the two of us. Honestly, I think it’s a great philosophy and I’ve kept that in mind since he first shared it with me.
Like many, I struggle at times to come up with the perfect gift. I try to listen to my wife throughout the year when she mentions some things she might like, and I pay attention to the things that she’s interested in so that I don’t have to ask her what she wants for her birthday or Christmas. With my kids, several years ago I started taking a different approach. I decided to get them a personalized gift. These days most of our kids spend time on their devices, their computers, tablets, phones, whatever. But when I was growing up, we had a drawer full of physical photos and little photo books and photo albums. Granted, we didn’t pull them out very often, but there was something magical about that physical photo that you would interact with. We’d write the date on the back of it or who was in the photo and where it was taken.
So several years ago when my kids were still in high school, for Christmas I decided to get each of them a photo album. I also physically printed out photos that we had taken throughout the year as we had done various things and gone to various places. I was pleasantly surprised when each of them absolutely loved it. In fact, each of them has continued to add to it by printing off their own photos and making their own albums.
They each loved the gift so much that it started a trend where I started getting them a personalized gift every year. It also made me feel like I had to do something better the next year. And so I did. One year I got them each socks with my face on it and it said “#1 Dad.” And they loved it! The next year I got them pajamas that had my face on them.
The next year, I got them puzzle blocks that had photos on each side of different things that we had done and places we had gone. But as time went on, it got harder to figure out what my personalized gift was going to be. One year I got them customized Legos of themselves and gave them the option to keep it or trade it with each other so they’d have a personalized Lego set of their sibling. In case you’re wondering, they decided to keep their own.
But after that, I was kind of out of ideas. I wasn’t sure what to do. I searched the internet for inspiration, but I didn’t really find anything that I felt was good. By this time they’re adults. My son had already moved off to college. It’d been six or seven years of personalized gifts. I figured now that they were adults, it was probably a good time to bring it to an end. So I told them that I’d decided that they would not be getting a personalized gift from me that year. I told them that their mom and I were still going to get them stuff they would like and wanted, but not the personalized gift. I told them I was simply out of ideas. And they would not have it! They insisted that I get them a personalized gift and keep the tradition going.
Here’s what I learned.
I had really underestimated how significant these silly gifts were that I’d been getting for my kids. They loved the socks with my face on it. They loved showing them off to their friends and bringing a smile to other people’s faces. When my son moved to college, he would wear my face around the dorm and other places, and his friends loved it, they thought it was funny.
And so, it made a bigger impact with them than I realized. I was reminded of Jason and his philosophy. The best gifts are the ones that represent, in some way, something of the giver and something of a receiver. So, each Christmas, I step up. I find some way to give them a personalized gift, something that’ll make a memory, something that represents something of me and of them. And what I’ve realized is, those are the best gifts of all. Why? Because they’re thoughtful. They reflect our relationship and the bond we uniquely share. And remembering that is the greatest gift of all.
I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.
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