So one Thanksgiving I brought a friend to the family gathering with me. She had never met them. We have a rather large family and aren’t formal in any sense of the word. This particular time we knew several people were going to be gone for Christmas so we decided to do a white elephant gift exchange. We were sitting in a circle with forty gifts in the middle of the floor playing the game. My friend’s turn came up and she picked a box about a cubic foot in size. Inside it was filled with cat hair. It bounced out all over the place as my friend was frantically trying to brush it all off of her as fast as possible. Everyone was either laughing or “ewing.”  My Uncle piped up with laughter saying it was his box; I think his wife hit him. He announced that inside the box there were five euros. She took out the euros and exclaimed “I’m allergic to cats!” and walked as far away from the box as she could get. The room went silent, and people started picking up the cat hair from the floor. For the rest of the evening there was profuse apologizing. Luckily she didn’t have an allergic reaction.

Hana – TX