alt title: the art of giving gifts.
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i think giving gifts is a lost art.
it's a skill not everyone possesses.
this is especially true in today's age of consumerism and easy access.
gifts, in my humble opinion, are meant to be personal.
they should show that you care.
they should be ambassadors of your affection.
they should be able to represent you in your absence.
when you're not there, your gifts should serve to remind the receiver of the kind of person you are.
a good gift is either emotional — it has character.
it shows that thought has been put into it.
it's almost intimate.
it should make the other person go,
"how did they know that?"
or, it should be handmade.
it doesn't matter what it is —
as long as it has been made by your appendages, it should be fine.
this is because i think that bought gifts are cold.
they feel very transactional.
but when you make something with your hands —
you take time out of your day,
you learn how to make that thing,
then you put your fingers to use.
you do all this not to show that you brought a gift,
but because you care.
a gift made with your hands is cute.
it has a little heart, even.
perhaps a soul, even.
i had a friend.
i still have him.
kinda.
he left school when we were in 5th grade,
and he told us pretty early on,
but we thought he was just kidding —
because why would he be changing schools?
but he wasn't kidding.
and one day he told me that he had bought his new school's uniform,
and that today was his last day with us.
this time i believed him.
i, being me, did not know how to react to this.
emotions are kinda alien to me.
so i did what i thought was only right —
i took an a4 paper out of my bag (it was in pretty bad shape),
and i sat through all the lectures really brainstorming,
pushing my neurons to their limit —
to come up with a poem. 🫴🏻
my teachers and friends didn't know what i was so invested in —
why i was crumpling and throwing paper after paper in the dustbin —
but i kept going.
this was important work i was doing.
classmates did ask me what i was doing,
but i downplayed it.
because even before puberty,
i instinctively knew:
a straight man writing poems for another straight man looks kinda weird.
at last, i finished it.
and at pack-up time, i handed it over to him in a hurry —
didn't say anything,
just gave him a piece of paper as he was going to his school van.
didn't expect much out of it.
but i did it nonetheless,
because i cared.
come next day,
i arrive in school, 'loki' sad that my friend was not going to be there.
as i'm entering through the school gate,
a few girls are standing there
(and i'm just walking into the school because that's what i do
when there are a few girls standing there — i walk on without looking back).
now as i'm about to pass them,
one of them comes up to me.
i realize it's my friend's elder sister.
she hands me a box and says,
"this is for you.
he gave it to me and asked me to give it to you first thing in the morning."
i'm like,
"what is it?"
she's like,
"you should check for yourself. i don't really know."
i proceed to my class, curious.
but as soon as i enter, everyone is cheering and shit —
because apparently she had visited the class once already asking about me.
but since i wasn't there,
she then waited for me at the school entrance.
so they're like,
"why was she asking about you?"
i'm like,
"she gave me this box from him."
and now everyone else is more curious about it than me.
i (no, we) open it.
it's a watch.
it's a rolex.
(it's fake, but i don't know this yet because i'm a kid. i'm dumb.)
now the question my friends are asking is:
why was i the only one who got it?
especially one of our mutual friends —
he's particularly worried about why he didn’t get a watch.
i later told him about how i got my first fake rolex.
then i took that watch everywhere.
i was spamming that shit.
on the same day,
i had to visit the hospital with my mom, aunt, and cousin.
i went with the watch.
i even took the f**king box with me.
my cousin asks me,
"that's a nice watch — where did you get it?"
i'm like,
"a friend gifted it to me."
she's like,
"is it original?"
i'm like,
"it came in a box. it must be original."
let me now tell you about the box.
close your eyes.
imagine the cheapest, most bendable plastic you can imagine —
it's so bad, it's almost see-through.
now imagine that it's purple.
and inside this sorry purple excuse for a box is a yellow piece of foam.
on that foam rested my fake rolex watch.
needless to say,
i did not know that watch boxes are not supposed to be like this —
because it was my first 'boxed' watch.
if you're wondering what my first 'non-boxed' watch was —
it was a casio.
yeah. that casio. 👍🏻
i put that watch so high in my room, along with the box, after wearing it a few days,
because i thought that it was too prized a possession to wear.
but a few years later,
i was grabbing something,
and the purple box came flying down as well
and crashed into the ground.
and my fake rolex watch broke.
it was nostalgic to see it after so long.
i was happy to see it.
sad to see it break.
that watch is my metaphor for friendship.
it's my idea of a good gift.
and my poem is an idea of an even better gift.
you choose now —
will you buy a fake rolex,
or write a silly poem
and get a free fake rolex
and lifelong memories worth journaling?