{"id":862,"date":"2004-01-24T15:06:19","date_gmt":"2004-01-24T23:06:19","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T08:00:00","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/?p=862","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I learned from the HBO show <a href=\\\"http:\/\/www.hbo.com\/larrydavid\/\\\">Curb Your Enthusiasm<\/a> (produced and stars Larry David, creator of Seinfeld) that <i>No Presents<\/i> on a party invitation is a polite way of saying <i>Bring a gift.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>And I said so (with a bemused smile) when my dad showed me his coworker\\&#8217;s 50th birthday party invitation.  My parents rarely attend parties in the first place.  As a result, my mom fretted around the house for 30 minutes looking for a present (a box of cookies!) while my dad insisted that the no-present rule be taken literally.  In fact, my dad said that his coworker was probably being smart, having had bad experience in the past.  BUT!  Truth to be told, when I sent out my 21st birthday invite&#8230;I wrote <i>no presents<\/i> and the majority of the people who showed up bought something for me.<\/p>\n<p>Are presents worth more than the presence?<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps.  Because my dad related to me today how a friend travelled all the way from Hong Kong&#8230;and gave us only a bag of peanuts from the plane.  Surely if that memory stuck out, arriving without a present must at least be shocking.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, my parents left the house without a present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I learned from the HBO show Curb Your Enthusiasm (produced and stars Larry David, creator of Seinfeld) that No Presents on a party invitation is a polite way of saying Bring a gift. And I said so (with a bemused &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/?p=862\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/of.jennism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}