What is the greatest gift you ever got? I got a used spiro-graph set

[applegrove]

from my brother when he was 11 and I was 8. There was no paper and all the pencils were short and well chewed. I wasn't happy at the time but it turned into the greatest gift. My brother was a conservative at the time and trying to save money to start a business some day. By his teens he had turned into a social democrat. He was quite the radical at university. He was later an progressive activist. Quite a switch. And we get so much laughter out of that gift he gave me so long ago because he is such the antithesis of that little conservative boy and he is so fun to tease. By inadvertently putting so much of his un-evolved self into that gift he has given us the gift of laughter that has lasted almost 40 years.

[Throckmorton]

1. A simple Crystal radio kit in the fourth grade

An Xmas gift from my uncle, it led me to a career, and a lifetime love of all things electronic.

[gkhouston]

2. A bicycle. I was 10, and I'd given up asking for one.

I had two older siblings and they didn't have bicycles, either. I couldn't understand why my parents wouldn't give us bikes, and just assumed it was some weirdness they had. Years later, my oldest sibling told me why: my mom had seen a child on a bicycle killed by a car right in front our house when I was a baby.

After I got my bike, my siblings did, too, and we had a lot of fun, but that first day was the best: we had a huge backyard, so we took turns learning to ride my new bike there and laughing when we fell.

[murielm99]

3. I think mine might have been my bike, too.

It is certainly the gift I used the most.

[TorchTheWitch]

4. my dogs

Though I paid for them both and all their needs after even though sometimes I had to go without my own needs to see to theirs what they gave me is immeasurable and priceless.

How depressing that people think of the greatest gifts in their life in terms of material crap.