Yeah, cocaine was big in the 80s. I'm surprised it's still around. Maybe that's just my naivety to drug culture.

You know what else was big in the 80s and much less popular today? Care Bears.

I got a Care Bears action figure as a kid for Christmas. These were released in 1983 so that would make me five but I can't believe that I was that young. I would say that I was at least 10 but I don't know.

Anyway, it was my sister who gave me this. And upon opening this toy which is clearly geared to girls, I exclaimed, "I don't collect these!" Everyone laughed and my mother tried to shut me down, "No, it's a nice gift" et cetera.

My sister gave me what had to be an intentionally bad gift for Christmas and I wasn't allowed to state the blindlingly obvious.

I have some memories of playing with that bear alongside my GI Joes (they were a similar scale) but he certainly wasn't a mainstay. He was never a central figure to any stories. I don't believe that he took part in the fighting. He wasn't a Joe or a Cobra. He just made rare cameo appearances to make up the numbers.

So shitty gift. But isn't that funny? You gave your brother a shitty gift.

One time, when I was probably about 10 or 11, I got everyone in my family sausage and cheese for Christmas from one of those mail order companies. You'd get these catalogues around Christmas time. I bought little $5 or $10 packages for everyone.

It was a bad gift, no question. But somebody obviously approved this because I needed a cheque to pay for this.

Come Christmas, everyone laughs about how crappy this gift is. No problem. It was a bad gift. I was a kid. Lesson learned. Don't give sausage as a gift any more. And I didn't.

Then I'm about 23 years old. My sister is about 30. Not the sister who gave the Care Bear but another sister. I'm living at home after flunking out of law school. I'm very depressed, I'm suicidal. And it's Christmas.

This 30 year old woman bought me sausage and cheese for Christmas as a joke. Upon opening it, everyone laughs. "Oh, look at the shitty gift. It's just like that shitty gift you got us 15 years ago when you were a child."

I wasn't amused and said that I'm going to throw it out. My mother said that I'm not going to throw it out.

My neice was maybe 3 or 4 years old and gave me a package of BIC pens for Christmas. I don't know how much input a 3 or 4 year old can have to a Christmas gift but that was the gift. Everyone laughed. "Oh, look at the crappy gift that Baron got". I said that I don't need these. My mother said that I have to keep them.

So the next day, everyone goes out for KFC. I stayed home. I took that cheese and sausage, cut it up into tiny pieces, and threw it out. I also took a hammer to those pens and threw them out.

My mother comes home and when she discovers the food and the pens in the trash, she goes ballistic. "I WAS GOING TO EAT THAT CHEESE!" And she's beating me about the head. "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!"

About 15 years later, my niece says to me, "So why don't you talk to grandma any more?" I don't talk to any of those scumbags any more and if you know the history, you'd understand. But I don't want her to have a negative opinion about her grandmother or her mother or her aunt so I just leave it. So she doesn't talk to me. That's fine.