Elephants

White Elephant gift exchanges. You love them. You dread them. Each one could go terribly wrong at any moment.

Nobody wants to be stuck with the empty roll of toilet paper.

My beef isn't with the cardboard tubes. It's with the predictability. My knack of predicting the presence of coffee mugs and Starbucks gift cards at any random gift exchange would make a weatherman jealous. We need to up the ante, stop being self-enabled savants, and make gift exchanges fun again.

Here's my idea.

The original intent of the term "White Elephant" referred to objects that you couldn't get rid of and were hideously expensive to maintain.

Clearly, you see the problem with cardboard tubes. We don't maintain cardboard tubes; we throw them away.

We need better gifts. White elephants would fit the bill perfectly, but they're rather rare in Oregon. Dragons have the added ability of fire breathing, but they're extinct (not to mention hard to gift-wrap).

I'll admit I was stumped. But then, it hit me.

Siblings.

They're the perfect gift. Impossible to give away (I mean... what are you gonna do... put someone else's kid up for adoption?), and expensive to maintain (I'm not even going to bother proving this to you).

Don't get the wrong idea. I love my siblings to pieces. Sometimes literally. It's just, when they ride their bikes into my car or put The Chipmunk Song on repeat... in weak moments, I feel the best expression of love would be to put them up for adoption.

And hey, when it's a choice between adoption and instant death, who's going to argue?

So, if you see a suspicious mummy-shaped package at a gift exchange near you, keep this in mind. I've never claimed originality in my thought processes, so the responsibility for what you take home is yours and yours alone.

Just don't end up with the empty roll of toilet paper.

Until next time,
- Daniel