One day we were all out at Taco Bell on Antioch eating dinner (because apparently we wanted to torcher ourselves). From the lobby I could see a DAV thrift store across the street. I made a proposal that everyone quizzically agreed to. We would all enter and split up to look for a single item for each other member of the family. With 6 folks that came out to 25 individual gifts.
The goals being:
The hunt to find something of "value" in a sea of other peoples disregarded items
Find something that showed insight into each others interests
The rules:
Only one item per person
Only $10 total for your 5 gifts (so ~$2 each)
Keep it a secret till we get to the parking lot
I issued everyone some cash and we split up. Naturally it was a smallish store so we had to use shopping baskets to hide our loot as we went. In the end we took turns presenting to each other and explaining why we thought they would like it. Personally I got a gym bag out of the deal that I still use to this day! It was a fun little social experiment and one I think about recreating often.
6/23/2021