Wishlist

I have a complicated relationship with gifts. I like receiving them and I like giving them, but I'm a bit wary of gifts related to special occasions: birthdays, Christmas... it's sadly been ingrained into me (and in many others, actually) that there are times when you must give someone a present, and that present must have certain qualities. What are those qualities? You cannot know. Guess. If you get it wrong, you're awful and should be ostracized by the whole community. How dare you fuck up a present?1 I guess this is why I like group presents, so if you fuck up it's a shared burden. It's not like I act so violently when I receive a present I don't like either: at most, I'm mildly annoyed. My mom always complains that she likes "a lot of things" so it's very hard to gift her something she doesn't like. My mom also never ever expresses any wish or desire in her life, so to figure out what she might like you have to analyze a dataset of her previous reactions to received presents…