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A TikTok user has recounted the hilarious Christmas arms race she’s currently enduring with her brother, but it seems this gift-giving war has reached a stalemate.
The story was shared by TikToker @yourmamaontiktok10, who recalls how, for 28 years, her brother has been giving her children “the most obnoxious toys he can find” as Christmas gifts. It’s the oldest brotherly trick in the book, and it’s all to annoy his sister with gifts that are either obnoxiously loud, difficult to clean, or generally irritating. “The louder, the brighter, the more difficult it was to turn off,” she said of the gifts her brother had given her children over the years, “the funnier he thought it was.”
For a long stretch, it appeared that TikToker’s brother was winning this Christmas war, as he’d watch on and “shriek with delight” as his nieces and nephews opened gifts that would annoy his sister. That all changed, however, when he met his wife and had a child of his own, and the gift arms race could finally be waged on fair soil. “He would giggle because he could not imagine that someday he would have babies,” the TikToker said of her brother’s premature claim to Christmas war victory.
Thankfully for @yourmamaontiktok10, that day did arrive, and she came equipped with years of brainstorming around how to best annoy her brother with gifts for his new child, in what she described as “returning the favor.” There was a plea for a ceasefire, however, in the form of her sister-in-law, who said that while she “fully support[ed]” this years-long sibling gift prank, she wouldn’t be able to handle loud toys. The sister-in-law also reminded @yourmamaontiktok10 that it’s her brother who stays home and looks after the kids, so it would mostly be him who deals with whatever annoying toy she gifts.
The first item on @yourmamaontiktok10’s was a bucket of 500 plastic ants for her nephew, who was obsessed with bugs. “They’re still finding those little plastic ants all over their house,” the TikToker recalled gleefully. That might’ve been enough for her to get a leg-up in this arms race, were it not for her brother’s masterful (and annoying) birthday gift of a Mariachi band, who “followed me around my house while I did more chores.” Choosing not to accept defeat, however, @yourmamaontiktok10 got him back for her niece’s Christmas gift.
“I sent them a perfume making kit,” she said, likely envisioning the utter mess and chaos that would need to be cleaned by her brother. But it didn’t stop there, for that was only a fraction of the crafts he would likely spend hours cleaning up. “A big old batch of 30 colors of finger paint,” the TikToker said, before revealing the pièce de résistance “90 colors of ultra-fine glitter.” Even writing that sentence was enough to induce a panic, so I can only imagine the plight of the brother, who is likely still vacuuming said glitter as we speak. “He’s gonna cry on Christmas morning,” she said, before outright declaring herself the winner of the gift war.
Flocking to the comments, users expressed sympathy for the poor brother, who will “NEVER get rid of” the glitter or otherwise described the story as “sibling rivalry at its finest.” Others said it was the Mariachi band that truly won the war, or recounted similar rivalries with their nieces and nephews that involved molding clay, singing Elmo toys, and candle-making sets. I almost want to flash forward to December to see what her brother does next.