Last weekend my in laws decided to take our two children for an overnight at their house from Saturday night to Sunday. Needless to say, my kids love going to their grandparents, and my theory as to why primarily hinges on the fact that from the time they are in the presence of their granparents until the time they leave their custody, they do not hear the word no. There are a lot of other factors that go into why they enjoy the company of their grandparents (never ending sweets, unlimited television viewing, and constant attention) but not hearing the word no is a humungous selling point to my kids. This isn’t to say that they have it terribly bad when they are with their parents, but we do try to establish a few ground rules and I have been known to discipline my children on the rare occasions where I can no longer ignore their awful behavior (Fortunately for my kids I have an extremely high tolerance for awful behavior due to the fact that I am a criminal defense attorney). When I returned home from golf I realized that I was under no obligation to spend time with my kids because they were with their grandparents. I thought to myself, should I feel guilty that I don’t really miss my kids? If they were gone for a week I would miss them, right? Regardless of what I actually felt or thought I should feel I knew I had to take a advantage of the no kids thing, I know what your thinking, a little afternoon delight, but I knew that wasn’t happening because my wife was on a mission to organize the kid’s playroom above the garage and there was no way I was going to get her off task, even if it would only take her away from her organizing for no more than 45 seconds.
I decided to make up a fake errand so that I could hit the Tanger outlet mall for some holiday shopping (for myself). Fortunately Cara was so engaged in organizing the playroom she didn’t even realize I was gone much longer than what it would have taken to complete my errand. While I was on a mission to find a few items for myself, and based upon the fact that we were receiving at lest three packages from Amazon every day since Thanksgiving (this is two more than what we normally get during the non-christmas season) I assumed that Cara was handling all of the kid’s holiday shopping, I still wandered into the Toys R Us outlet store. I have joked that our local UPS person, Fed Ex person, and USPS person come to our house on a daily basis, even if they don’t have a package(s) for us, merely out of habit. I have also wondered what the impact on Amazon stock would be if my wife canceled her Amazon Prime membership. (I imagine it would drop at lest two to three dollars a share)
My kids are still young enough that I’m not overly concerned about the fact that my wife has decided to monopolize shopping for their Christmas gifts. However, visiting Toys R Us really opened my eyes to what could be at their (my) disposal should I start shopping for their gifts. The first item that grabbed my attention was a semi automatic nerf gun that shoots nerf darts and looked like something Sylvester Stalone utilized in the Rambo movies. I immediately envisioned myself and my kids running through our house shooting at one another for hours on end. This could help me deal with the seasonal mood disorder that will set in in a matter of weeks. It’s painful trying to come up with stuff to do with your kids when you get home from work, it gets dark at 4pm, and even if it did stay light out longer there is little chance you could go outside anyways. I’m pretty sure I would never get sick of shooting a semi-automatic nerf dart gun at my kids. The age on the box said 8 and up, but obviously they put that on there for to avoid any liability. If I could get a couple pairs of child size safety goggles and somehow talk my kids into wearing them (parker doesn’t even want to wear gloves or a hat when it’s ten degrees below zero) we would have nothing to worry about. Ok, almost nothing to worry about, our Boston Terrier already has a mild case of PTSD from the torture my kids inflict on her on pretty much a daily basis, but I have a solution for the emotional toll three sets of semi-automtic nerf dart guns could inflict on our dog. I could get a dog from the pound that my kids could shoot at to shield Allie from the unintentional/intentional infliction of emotional distress she is likely to suffer at the hands of my children. I’d just keep our other dog in the storage shed when the nerf guns aren’t out. I kind of thought a cat would be better suited as a target than a dog due to their superior agility but I truly hate cats and I don’t want my kids to think having a cat is acceptable, even if it’s sole purpose is to be used as a shooting target.
The second gift that I must get my children is a slotless race car set, it’s similar to a slot car set but way more apparently it actually works. (I would have included a picture but my blogging skills are rudimentary at this point and I haven’t figured out how to cut and paste yet, but if I do I will be sure to update the blog with the appropriate pictures) True slot cars actually are connected to the track but the new and improved version are not connected to the track and operate through some sort of magic technology that is way too complicated for me to figure out, all I can tell is that it is awesome. When I saw this on Amazon I was skeptical, it seemed way too good to be true, however there were 78 user reviews and all of them were ringing endorsements. I’m sorry but that never happens, there’s usually at least a couple people complaining about whatever the product is just because they like to complain. “I give the race car set one star, one of the race cars ran off the track and surprised my cat, causing it to poop on the floor.” I’m pretty sure this is an actual Amazon review based on how absurd some of the reviews I’ve read actually are.
I ended up making a huge mistake over dinner that night. I brought up the nerf guns and the race car set to my wife. In hindsight I should have done what she would have done, not consult with me, make the purchase on Amazon, have it shipped and then show it to me when it arrives. Not sure why she would think either of these gifts were a bad idea, but they were instantly shot down by her. In all honesty, I think she realizes that since I have a penis I am going to be way better at purchasing gifts that our two boys like so she is going to try and hold on as long as possible to be the sole shopper for their Christmas needs. She has shown me what she has purchased the kids, and they are great, well thought out gifts, but if I busted out the nerf guns and the race track after they open “her” gifts there is not a chance that they pay those gifts any attention. Those gifts would be even more neglected than the toys they currently have and the dog I plan on getting from the pound for target practice.
So, the big question is how do I back door my way into these gifts that my kids (I) must have? I already put them on my Christmas list for my mother-in-law to purchase for me, but she wondered why I needed three of the nerf guns and two sets of child sized safety goggles and thought a racetrack was unnecessary since I already have a driver’s license. Do I just purchase them and say to hell with the consequences? Or, do I allow my wife one more year of being the best Christmas gift giver in our family? The package does say the nerf guns are for ages 8 and up and the racetrack seems to be for kids who don’t poop their pants (parker) or drool (Aiden) but if I wait until they stop doing those things it could be years before I am able to get the racetrack set I so dearly covet. Plus, I sent a link to the racetrack to my brother-in-law and his response was he thought it was a little advanced for our kids. DUH! It’s probably a little advanced for my brother-in-law and I as well, but it’s totally awesome. I bought Aiden a motorized Jeep at least a year before he had the requisite amount of arm strength to turn the steering wheel but have rarely been one to use practicality or common sense when gift giving. So, this whole idea of who the gifts are actually for gets me to the main point of this current blog.
Having girls would be horrible, no just kidding, but having two boys will definitely allow me to live vicariously through the gifts I am able to purchase for them and make up for the unimaginative toys I grew up with and the lack of initiative my parents had in their gift giving (decision to not spoil me). Seriously, I am sure having girls is great, but the only toy I think I would utilize is that barbie take and bake oven, those cakes you can make look so delicious, other than that I don’t see a whole lot out there that I would be interested in.
Growing up there a couple of prime examples of how things are much better than I remember them being and they can be directly tied to the two “Christmas Presents” I would like to purchase for Aiden and Parker. My brothers are eight and eleven years younger than I am and I remember them having nerf weapons that you could put three nerf balls you could load up and shoot at people. You had to pump the weapon and the balls actually had an arc to them due to the lack of speed and force behind them. My brothers still utilized them to try and torture my friends who rarely came over because my brothers resembled caged animals released into the wild. If my brother’s had the nerf guns I have my eye on for my kids(me) my friends would have never come over to our house. Similarly, my uncles were into slot car racing and had an elaborate track set up in my grandparent’s basement when I was a kid (not now, that would be really awkward, although I’m sure my uncles wouldn’t mind taking a week off form their current lives to race slot cars in my grandparent’s basement if my grandparents were still alive). However, the thing rarely worked because the track would constantly short out and on top of that you basically had to be the slot car equivalent of a NASCAR driver to get the cars to stay on the track. Furthermore, it would take hours to set up the slot car track with no guarantee that it would actually work (similar to putting all the lights on your Christmas tree only to find out one of the strands has a short in it)
My only fear is that I see no end to technology making my kids childhood (my life) way better than the childhood I had or even a childhood I dreamed about as I was forced to watch Non-high definition television and play pong and space invaders on Atari (I can’t believe I actually thought that was awesome). Part of me feels like kids have it way too good now a days, but something tells me that is exactly how our parents felt when they were purchasing our Christmas gifts and remembering their days of playing lincoln logs and tinker toys. My grandparents actually had an electronic football game that you would put plastic players on and the thing would vibrate and the plastic players would move haphazardly across the playing field. That was the game. I can’t imagine giving that to a kid today and telling them to play with it, they would probably figure out a way to wire it into their x-box and actually make it somewhat entertaining. What is a parent to do? I have vowed that my kids are not going to play video games (mainly because I suck at them and don’t want them kicking my ass repeatedly) but also because we went outside as kids and pretended to shoot one another and actually on occasion did shoot one another with our bb guns, now you don’t even have to leave your house to virtually shoot shit up. My five year old already has a significant amount of disdain for the outdoors and seems to have purchased a one way ticket to becoming a couch potato. Is it wrong of me to want my kids to have as deprived and as terrible of a childhood as I had? Is there a way I can accomplish this but still get them a ton of awesome stuff that I can play with? I don’t really want them to have to go through the truly awful stuff I had to go through like going to church twice on Sunday, having your dad call you pizza face because of your really bad acne that was handed directly down to you by his genes, or non high def television but they need to suffer a little bit of adversity? Don’t they?
That brings me to the second point of why our children’s lives are so much better than ours. Not only does technology totally kick ass, budgets for what parent’s spend on their kids seem to be non existent. My parents should have spent way more money on my toys and gifts when I was growing up, I would have been a much happier child and much more compliant with their demands. Wait a minute, maybe they did know what they were doing, they told me if I wanted more than what they were willing to give me I would have to find a way to make my own money. That resulted in me getting a paper route in sixth grade and a job at a muck farm in seventh grade. Both were what you would call character (awful) building experiences and they were invaluable.
Unfortunately, I can’t imagine scaling back on Christmas to try and get a point across to my kids about materialism and the unfortunate turn Christmas has taken due to the emphasis upon consumerism in society today. Cara sent me an email about looking for some type of charitable event us and the kids can participate in over the holidays so they can understand the true meaning of Christmas. Our kids are bright but not that bright, volunteering at a soup kitchen isn’t really going to drive the point home to them and I can’t imagine they have the attention span to ring the bell outside of Meijers to collect money for the Salvation Army. (The endless number of Amazon boxes in our garage and the possibility that we may need to rent a storage space to store the kids gifts until Christmas is not what brought her to the realization that our kids may be spoiled and missing the point, it was the show Blackish where they addressed the very same issues in the past week’s episode) I told her what may actually drive the point home is not buying them so much crap for Christmas, but that ship has already sailed. However, it would have been much easier to actually walk the walk and not just talk the talk had I not made the unfortunate mistake of going into Toys R Us last Saturday and discovering the plethora of nerf urban assault weapons available without a mandatory waiting period at quite a reasonable price. I may have actually packaged up some of the gifts in the garage and sent them back to Amazon, it would have possibly taught my kids a lesson while allowing me to once again park my truck in the garage. Ignorance truly would have been bliss. The more I explore what is out there in the toy world the more I think to myself “do I really want to try and un-spoil my children?” I guess the biggest question now is: “Do I try out the Slotless Race car set before the kids open it to make sure it works, or do I just hope for the best?” They are going to be truly disappointed if it doesn’t work and they are forced to play with the gifts their mom got them, but hey as Kelly Clakston once said “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” Amen Kelly! Amen!
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