My brother graduated a few weeks ago and this is what I've seen him do: go to the coast for a few days, sleep, go tanning. This gave me an excellent idea. First, all graduation gifts are sent to a sort of escrow account. The recipient is told the total amount. The would-be recipient then tells you what he's going to do with them (get drunk at the coast, go tanning), then the giver can either leave it alone, take some or all of it back, or add to it - the recipient doesn't know. The new amount is told the recipient. The recipient can then alter his or her plans, and so forth. I figure it would be around 3 or 4 rounds until equilibrium is achieved. The giver would also have the choice to not release the funds until the recipient does something - like if he says he's going to plant a tree and give CPR to puppies, then he wouldn't get the money until that happens. This is a really great idea because if you knew that your nephew was going tanning and wasting money on bodybuilding snake oil, you'd pass on giving it to him and flush it down the toilet yourself.
I was at a sporting goods store today (THE SPORTS AUTHORITY - a name I do not like) and they play a little game with you. It seems that maybe 1/2 of their crap has prices (this is probably par for the course for sporting goods stores, I think), so if you find something you want to buy, you get a little "aha!" when you go to buy it. The other thing is sort of a misdirection - there might be some price tags on the racks or shelves, but the thing for which they provide information is not there. It's a little joke, like, "Yeah, we have no clue what's going on in our store, either."
