I bought Aaron an MD play­er today. He’s been need­ing quite a few things, like his TV fixed, an aquar­i­um, a new hard-dri­ve, etc. so I thought I’d make it eas­i­er on him since his Discman just broke too. I’m not real­ly sure what he’ll say though. I’ve learned a lot about gift giv­ing with­in the last year, and I know that some peo­ple are very sen­si­tive about it. A while ago, I nev­er could have imag­ined some­one refus­ing to accept a gift, unless there was a sin­is­ter pur­pose, such as a bribe. I always felt like it was rude if some­one refused a legit­i­mate gift.

I sup­pose it’s sim­i­lar to the idea of hos­pi­tal­i­ty. Can it ever be rude to refuse some­one’s hos­pi­tal­i­ty? Even if they spend an inor­di­nate amount of time prepar­ing for such a thing? I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that it would­n’t be rude to decline an offer of hos­pi­tal­i­ty. After all, it is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the host to make sure that the guest is com­fort­able. If the guest refus­es hos­pi­tal­i­ty for what­ev­er rea­son, then that should be fine. The host should be hap­py with what­ev­er the guest is hap­py with.

It’s only with this exam­ple that I’ve come to under­stand the gift-giv­ing idea as well. If some­one refus­es to accept a gift from me, I would be fine with that. I sim­ply want to make the per­son hap­py.

Which is why I’m not wor­ried to give Aaron such a gift. I won’t be offend­ed in any way, no mat­ter what his reac­tion is.

I can’t wait.