Best-present-ever.

I’ve received many presents in my time. Loads. But being asked to pick one, the best one I’ve ever been given, is a difficult, horrible task. I’m sure that as I child I did my fair share of wanting and whinging, and got my fair share of best-present-evers. Today though, I’m going to talk about a present I got as a surprise.

For Christmas 2007, Iain got me a camera. It was totally unexpected (although now he tells me I had been complaining about the camera I had at the time). Along with the camera, he presented me with a photo album, a few pages of which were already filled with photos – things like graduation ball snapshots and general photographic silliness. I absolutely loved it, and I still do.

To this day I carry the camera around with me (almost) everywhere. Most of the time I remember to bring a memory card with me as well, which is helpful.

I think that although the camera is amazing, and definitely far more than I was expecting to receive, that the fact that it was packaged with an already-started photo album is what made me super happy. That kind of portrays a message; it makes you think of memories, of making memories, of the future. At the time, it all sort of made me think “Oh, this person really likes me, and wants to stick around at least long enough to fill this photo album with memories that include me,” which was really, really nice. That’s what makes a good gift, I think; a good gift isn’t about how much money you can spend on someone (although I imagine the camera wasn’t cheap!), it’s about the thought that goes into it. Clichés are usually clichés for a reason!

Honourable mention goes to Lite-Brite though!

Look at how adorable I am!

Of friendship bracelets and fake-typing.

Way back in week 3 of Change by Design (oh my goodness, check out how long I’ve been a student for already!), Jonathan gave us a wee blogging prompt that I keep going back to thinking about.

Think about something you were given, or have given to someone else, and how its meaning has changed from when it was made to now.

At first I couldn’t really think of anything that fit in to this topic, but then after ruminating for a while something popped into my head.

A few years ago, when I was about nineteen, I went through a month-long phase of being seriously into making friendship bracelets – I think I’d found an old instruction sheet from when I was about twelve, and decided that it would be an ace way to use up the ridiculous stash of embroidery threads I’d amassed since then (which is nothing compared to the stash I have going now, by the way!). So I knotted and knotted and knotted, and produced friendship bracelet upon friendship bracelet. And I think I probably just threw away most of them in the end, but one ended up absent-mindedly tied around my boyfriend’s wrist one day. And it stayed there. And it stayed there. And it’s still there.

Well… the original one lasted about two years and then fell off, but I made a second one to replace it, which is still holding strong.

I find it really interesting how something very insignificant can grow to somehow have a significant meaning to someone, and have memories and sentiments attached to it, and I find it especially interesting how that can happen completely arbitrarily. Why does some embroidery thread knotted together now somehow have any special meaning to me, and why can’t I really explain it?

I suppose this bracelet now means something to me because he kept it. I could have thrown that one out with the rest of them, he could have taken it off and thrown it away, it could have fallen off and not been noticed. But he kept it, and when it did break, it was already something important. It had quite quickly become something more than just thread.

People don’t always love the things that are expensive and flashy, I suppose, and often it’s simply the gesture of giving a gift that is appreciated. Rather than reserving sentiments for precious metals and expensive price tags, often it’s just a case of “I love this because it was given to me by [someone].” or “I love this because it reminds me of [something].” or “I love this because [someone] made it for me.”

I stage a good fake-typing photo, don't I?

Someone did once ask if Iain was a Buddhist after spotting it, though.