Great story ideas for your speeches can come from all sorts of places. I have blogged before that I get great ideas from a media inquiry email that I get several times a day. Media people looking for experts can option into an email listing their needs. Today a journalist from a large magazine was looking for stories of the worst gift you have ever gotten. As soon as I started thinking about it, I was laughing and transported back to Christmases past like a short blond Ebenezer Scrooge. I have received many bad Christmas presents. I am an expert in nonverbal communication and absolutely love to buy the perfect present for my friends each Christmas, but I am sure I have probably given a few funny gifts in my mind to. If you are looking for stories for your speeches start brainstorming best and worst in your life. Best birthday, worst vacation, best boss, worst haircut. Here are the stories and a few of my sister’s stories of worst gifts that I sent to the journalist. Use them to inspire you. In addition, send me your worst gift stories.

Let me start by saying that thank goodness, I have a great fun filled family and good sense of humor and bad gift just means fodder for me for a great story for my next speech. I would say the most embarrassing was a Christmas gift of a 50-dollar gift certificate to Victoria Secret, from my future in-laws!
Worse yet, my fiancé had lied and told them that is what I wanted! The next gift I opened that Christmas a Victoria Secret flimsy nightie from him. We did not get married

Worst gifts, again so many. My 40th Christmas my mother only gift was a set of green feather dusters from Walgreen's because she thought my house was dusty. That same Christmas my sister gave me a set a fiesta dishes and as I opened them she said, “We were saving them to give them to you when you got married, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen so we thought we better give them to you now.”
Close third for the list of worst gift ever after giving wonderful though at times eccentric presents to my cherished nieces and nephews for over 30 years my 25-year-old niece sent me a Trader Joe's grocery bag for Christmas last year. She had sent everyone else in the family homemade soaps and bath salts. I guess that meant she thought I was clean but hungry. I hope it did not mean she saw a future for me as a bag lady.

Ohhh I forgot the year my best friend gave me an ironing board and a full-length mirror. I fear that was hint to press my clothes and look in the mirror before I left the house.

I just got off the phone with my sister and we started laughing so hard as we talked about all the funny gifts our charming, but eccentric mother has given us over the years, The picked over “free gift” makeup my mother got from buying something for herself from Estee Lauder. The wine gift basket she gave my sister and brother in law for their anniversary that was dusty and still had the gift tag with her name on it that someone had given her for her birthday the year before. My sister’s biggest laugh came recalling the year she got married and mom sent her first Christmas gift to her new son in law, the two free giant troll dolls she got as a gift from the bank for opening an account. Robin said her new Husband held up to his ears and said, “Was it the close resemblance that inspired this gift?” She said the most painful gift was the skirt my mother gave my sister one Christmas that was a size 20 skirt. My sister who was in her thirties and had recently worked hard to lose baby weight was a size 12. When my sister held up the skirt my Mom said, “It was such a good buy, and you will grow into it!”

I thought of the Christmas my shy sister got a shocker present. This sister is very conservative, she likes to blend in the background so she only wears blue, white, and tan and mostly lives in T-shirts and blue jeans. She hates bright colors and prissy clothes. One year my mother gave her a huge box of Lilly Pulitzer clothes in hot pink, celadon green, purple and turquoise. The clothes were all print dresses, skirts and tops. My sister was mortified even to try them on and my mom insisted that she alter them for her over Christmas so my sister could wear them right away.

Patti Wood, MA, CSP
The Body Language Expert
Phone-404-315-7397
Web- http://www.PattiWood.netBlog- http://www.http://www.bodylanguagelady.com