Danny ChaiI feel like explaining Henry’s comment a couple entries back.
So frosh year, there was this trend of having big birthday parties and having everyone chip in to get a gift. Nice enough thing to do. Problem was, it was getting out of hand; every gift was getting progressively bigger. By the time my birthday came around in March, the proposal was to get a really nice guitar, since the one I had was a crappy $75 one.
At this point, two of my “friends” and future groomsmen stepped in and, saying that things were snowballing out of control, stopped people from getting me a guitar, or (my memory is hazy on this) a gift of any kind. For the record, I agree with them. The trend of crazy expensive gifts was getting out of hand and someone had to say enough was enough.
The only thing is, after they successfully stopped this from happening, I was pulled into a similar birthday gift contribution thing a week later for my future roommate. So I got nothing, and a week later he got a nice set of rollerblades, partially paid for by me.
Not that I’m bitter. But as it turns out, I’ve still never gotten a good guitar with a pickup that I could use at church. The one I have now was given to me by nuwanda@rice.edu, and it’s great, but I can’t use it in a large setting. So they didn’t hurt me. They just hurt every church and small group I have ever been to since the beginning of college.