Gifts carry a dangerous glamour. They encourage us to dream of being lavished with the things we wish for but can’t have (or are too practical to indulge in) and—the emotionally fraught part—to dream of having those who love us discern our longings without our having to confess them. Beneath the gift wrapping we imagine something that demonstrates how well the giver truly knows and cares about us, something that affirms the person we wish to be. So we’re hurt when the gift seems either perfunctory (Strayed’s 12-pack of Diet Cokes) or completely inappropriate—a present for someone else. (In some cases, that someone else is literally the gift giver, who wants in on the present.) Saying “he’s hard to buy for” is, unless he’s ascetic or impossibly wealthy, usually a way of saying, “I don’t really know him that well.” The sad truth is that most of us don’t really know each other that well.