Missing gifts from party?

Barbara wrote:
On Jun 19, 4:46 am, Sarah Vaughan wrote:
Barbara wrote:
[...]
If not, you have two options, as I see it:
(i) Have your son write an ambiguous thank you note, thanking the
child for attending the party.
(ii) Lie through your teeth. ;- Call the family and tell them that
you ran out to the bathroom while your son was opening the
presents,and in just those few moments, things managed to go awry, and
you're having trouble sorting who gave what for thank you notes.
Why on earth would anyone need to lie about this particular
circumstance? The original mix-up with the gifts wasn't her fault at all.
SNIP
It was the fault of someone who was working on her behalf. Between
her and the party-goer, the fault is entirely hers.

Oh, good grief, that's hair-splitting. It hardly sounds like the kind
of fault that anyone would blame her for - it was an understandable mix-up.

However, thinking about it, it was pretty silly for me to bring up the
whole issue of whether or not it was the OP's fault, because the fact
that it wasn't is a complete red herring here. If it had been her
fault, that wouldn't have made lying acceptable. So I'm not sure in
retrospect why I said that. Forget this whole bit of the conversation. ;-)

The reason not to say outright that you didn't receive the gift is
because its grubby. It sounds too much like *hey, you came to the
party, now where's my kid's loot* You're also putting the gift giver
in a position where s/he may feel that s/he should be giving another
gift to replace the lost one.

I totally agree. My disagreement was not with the idea that the OP
needed to find some more indirect way of letting the other people know
of the possible mix-up, but with the idea that she'd need to lie about
the reason why it happened.


All the best,

Sarah
--
http://www.goodenoughmummy.typepad.com

"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be" - P. C. Hodgell