“If it’s new to you,” the father of the family announced to his family before they began opening gifts. “Then it’s new enough.”
His children, all nearly adults, groaned. They knew what kinds of gifts to expect from their father. They were new, but…. They were no longer surprised to unwrap a gift and find it to be a roll of toilet paper, or box of granola bars, or can of vegetables. Now, he was adding a twist this year. What could he mean?
As they opened their gifts they found out. No canned vegetables or other consumables, every item was obviously not new.
“I saw something like this in the thrift store last month,” one child remarked while holding up a decorative figurine.
“Aunt Camelia used to have a picture like this in her back bedroom, didn’t she?” Another asked as they held up a small framed landscape.
“We saw this last week!” Two of his children shrieked together as one of them pulled out a hideous looking coffee mug.
“There can’t be two of these on the planet,” one of them said staring at the thing in disbelief.
Their father just beamed with joy.
“That’s what you meant!” A child accused him. “You got all this stuff, this junk, at a thrift store!”
“If it’s new to you, it’s new enough,” their father repeated.
“Oh, Dad!” Some of them exclaimed together.
“Well, you were tired of the other stuff,” their father said in his defense. “So, I decided to do something different this year. Besides, I can’t ever find anything you really like.” Then he paused. “And, you all know I hate shopping. This is stuff you can get rid of, or give to someone else next year.”
“Like THAT frog!” Two of his children said in unison.
“Yes!” Agreed another.
“Oh, my God! That frog!” They all began laughing.
The frog had disappeared one year from the larger family gift exchange, no one knew where, and they all missed it. One of their father’s aunts had found it and given it to her sister. The next year that sister had given it to her daughter. The daughter had given it the next year to their father. The next year he gave it to someone else. That next year they hadn’t been able to have a large family gift exchange, nor the next year, and the frog was never seen again.
This was an unforgettable ceramic frog. It was almost a foot tall, bright, bright green, with large, white bulging eyes, and huge, bright red, human lips! It was so repulsive no one could stop looking at it!
The first year it was a gift, it came in an appropriately sized box. One year it was in the bottom of a huge box filled with crumpled up newspaper. Another year it came on a plate slathered in whipped topping – as if it was a cake! One year, the giver walked in with it wrapped like a turban on her head – which she took off and gave away. It was the highlight of every gift exchange for several years. Now, maybe their dad was trying to restart that tradition in his own family. Only time would tell.