Growing up, my parents never gave me as much as I wanted for my birthday. For example, one year I wanted a yo-yo, and they ended up giving me some wound up string. Gee, thanks, mom.

...I expected a gift, you know, something nice and useless...

Happy birthday, this isn't your real present,
you'll get that later. (Not flowers)
Love Strike x

. . . gifts have a way of coming to those who do not desire them

In our family we had a well-to-do aunt who always gave us magnificent Christmas presents. She was so much part of the family that we even included her in our prayers at bedtime... I suppose I must have been nine or ten years old at the time. Suddenly Aunt Anna's Christmas presents were lying there too, and among them a parcel with 'Forsner's on it. So of course I instantly knew it contained a projector. For a couple of years I'd been consumed with a passionate longing to own one, but had been considered too small for such a present... I was incredibly excited. Because my father was a clergyman we never got our presents on Christmas Eve, like other Swedish children do. We got them on Christmas Day... Well, you can imagine my disappointment when it turned out to be my older brother — he's four years older than myself — who got the projector — and I was given a teddy bear. It was one of my life's bitterest disappointments. After all, my brother wasn't a scrap interested in cinematography. But both of us had masses of lead soldiers. So on Boxing Day I bought the projector off him for half my army and he beat me hollow in every war ever afterwars. But I'd got the projector, anyway.

For your birthday, I got you a box. Hooray! It’s empty, so you can fill it with whatever you want.

I didn’t feel like buying him the jacket he asked for for Christmas, so I just got him a coat hanger with a sticky note attached that read, “Here’s something for you to hang your dreams on, pal.

Like many a longed-for gift, it was, in possession, unwelcome.

... I discovered life sometimes has a way of giving you what you need, but not in the form you expect.

Not everything I've wanted has manifested. This has usually been a blessing in disguise. Too many times I've believed that I wanted and needed something, but it was all for the wrong reasons. Over the years I've gained clarity and sighed with relief for not getting what I thought was surely meant for me. Often, I've not got what I wanted, only to find I've later been blessed with even more.

God did not give me everything that i wanted. But, He gave me everything that i needed!

Your parents are weirdos, in the best possible way. They do not celebrate birthdays; never in your life have you received a present on the tenth of December. Instead, you are given books on the days that their authors were born.

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known

I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.