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Sat 25 Nov, 2006 05:37 am
For the CHRISTMAS SEASON*:
What r some clever, unconventional gifts,
calculated to elicit joy ?
( I like to donate to INDIVIDUALS,
de-emfasizing gifts to collectivist charities )
I believe that if a gift is UNEXPECTED
that increases the thrill it generates.
To start the ball rolling:
1. Secretly stuff an automatic umbrella with
plenty of $20s, $50s and $100 bills and urge
your donee beneficiary to open it indoors
to check the mechanism ( then the cash will rain on her or him ).
2. While hot air ballooning,
drop a lot of dimes n quarters onto grassy areas below,
within sight of children, who can approach n take
the cash, like an Easter Egg hunt. ( Do not bom the children. )
3. Give good leather gloves,
with clandestine $100 bills inserted into each.
Cash has a certain libertarian and hedonic versatility to it.
4. Give good books, with $100 bills surreptitiously inserted, as bookmarks.
5. Give fine quality leather wallets,
well stuffed with $20s, $50s, and $100 bills.
6. Give old gold or silver coins,
from earlier centuries, with good legible dates.
7. Give beautiful, dated old petrified wood, perhaps sliced as bookends
( or other fossils ) using $50s and $100 bills as soft, cushioning, packing materials.
Note that children tend to have smaller cash flows;
therefore, each monetary donation to a child stands a better chance
of eliciting a greater contrast with his or her accustomed experience,
thus probably resulting in relatively more INTENSE joy.
( Ideally, all cash shud be new n clean. )
There is an advantage in giving presents to children
in the presence of their families,
in that if the gift is memorable ( for being unusual, in any respect )
it can become the subject matter of discussion among them
for years to come, in which case, thay will mentally and emotionally RE-LIVE the experience
and the joy thereof is RE-generated with each telling of the tale, at no cost to the donor.
Additionally, an empathic, vicarious joy can be created in parents
who witness the good fortune of their children,
thus generating a secondary hedonic " ripple effect " **
in the witnesses. That is cash efficient.
The down side is that some children have been robbed
by their parents; MY father stole several hundred dollars from me.
In theory, it was a loan when I let him have it,
but quite a few decades have passed since then
( this was not long after World War II )
so I don 't hold out much hope of seeing that money again.
Add any other creative ideas
to call forth joy from your donees ?
I choose to wish every participant in these fora a very MERRY CHRISTMAS Season
David
* or at any Season,
but I like to be politically rong as ofen as possible
** Raymond Moody, Jr. M.D. " Life After Life "
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