Tim Kreider

Parental presents are especially fraught. Most painful of all, for me, were the sweaters. For years my mother bought me perfectly nice sweaters of a kind that I never wear: sweaters with patterns, “Cosby Show” sweaters, suburban dad sweaters. I felt she was attempting to dress me as a big sexless teddy bear rather than a man living in New York City and still hoping, in middle age, to attract a mate.

The most memorable of these was bright red, with a gold crest on its breast, like the sigil of the kind of hoity-toity prep school I did not attend, and drooped so hugely on me I looked like a small boy dressed in his father’s clothes. My girlfriend charitably suggested that I “loomed large” in my mother’s mind.

Tim Kreider is an essayist and cartoonist. He is the author of, most recently, the essay collection “I Wrote This Book Because I Love You.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/24/opinion/bad-holiday-gifts.html