From a New York Times piece entitled When You Can’t Forget the Gifts You Didn’t Get:
In the hierarchy of social transgressions, the wedding-gift omission, for some, is a sin of the highest order, the cause of relationship breakdowns and unwavering resentment.
“You could talk to a 98-year-old woman and she won’t be able to tell you what song she danced to at her wedding, but she can tell you who didn’t give her a gift,” said Jodi R. R. Smith, an etiquette expert in Marblehead, Mass., and consultant for the wedding industry.
The piece goes on to describe a handful of women who are angry and continue to hold grudges about wedding gift omissions, some from decades ago.
I have theory on these women and people similar to them:
Scientists have discovered that as a result of interbreeding hundreds of thousands of years ago, most of us have a little bit of Neanderthal DNA inside us. In fact, you can purchase a genetic test to determine exactly how much.
I’d like to go out on a limb and predict that someday scientists will also discover that human beings who fixate on a wedding gift omission have at least a little bit of pond scum DNA inside them as well.
Anyone who would allow the lack of a wedding gift to impact a relationship or even linger in the memory years after the big day has to be one of the basest, most materialistic, most petty persons on the planet. Can a person be so bereft of meaning in their life that something like a wedding gift omission is the thing they choose to remember long term?
Add to this the tunnel vision required to allow your name to be used in a piece like this. It takes a fairly pathetic person to harbor these feelings of anger about the lack of a wedding gift, but it requires a whole new level of stupidity to announce these vile and self-loathing thoughts to the world and a New York Times reporter.
