Daddy was the absolute WORST when it came to buying him any sort of gift.
We would ask him what he would want, and he would end up saying something along the lines of "a hug from you" or "a kiss from you" or "having you move back to Michigan", yada, yada, yada.
Yes, I know it was sweet, but it was also frustrating because we were going to buy him a gift regardless, so throw us a bone already!
We'd usually buy him some clothes or something boring along those lines, but his lack of enthusiasm over said gifts was quite apparent. His daily routine would be to sit, sit, and sit some more in front of the TV all day watching CNN, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, etc, and we wanted him to do something else he may enjoy.
One Christmas, we thought we had figured out the perfect gift for him. He had a strong faith in his religion, and we thought maybe he would enjoy some Hindu texts. We brought it up casually with him in conversation, and based on that, it sounded like he would enjoy receiving such a thing as a gift.
Finally, an idea! So we (the three siblings) bought him The Vedas, which are old sacred Hindu texts for him to read. We were really excited to give them to Daddy.
When he opened his gift, we were waiting for a smile of approval... but instead we got this blank stare and question:
"What am I supposed to do with these?"
We were all befuddled. We said you should READ them, and we had the idea you would enjoy a gift like this. He said fine, fine, and that was it. We were annoyed with him and said you need to do something else rather than just watch TV all day, and he relented and apologized and said he would read them.
We believed him until I came back home months later, and there were the books, still in the exact same pile we had left them after Christmas, completely untouched. That was annoying, but we surrendered. After that, we decided not to get Daddy any more gifts because all he wanted was for his kids to be home, as he viewed that as the best gift of all.
Or maybe we should have just gotten him a new TV for Christmas. Meh.