Toy Story

Quick observations on my recent trek to purchase some Christmas gifts for my toddler cousins: that shit is pricey.

Less-quick observations to follow: I found myself in Wal-Mart Thursday afternoon/evening trying to do some quick, not-quite-last-minute Xmas shopping for my three adorable (and by "adorable" I mean "thank goodness they're not mine, they go home to someone else after we babysit them but I love them all the same because to not do so would be to be a horrible cousin") cousins. My sis, who is preggers with her first kid on the way soon, was also on my mind as I circled the hell that is the toy department at this time of year, but alas I couldn' justify buying her as-yet-unborn bundle of joy a Boba Fett helmet, no matter how cool it looked.

As I roamed the aisles, wondering how I looked as the only non-accompanied-by-a-kid-or-significant-other person there ("warning, he might be a child molestor!"), I came across some old favorites from my own youth, GI Joe and Transformers and Legos and Star Wars. And let me tell you now, that shit is pricey.

Some of the Lego playsets were up to fifty dollars, ditto the more elaborate Star Wars and GI Joe stuff. Granted, the action figures were their usual not-so-bad price, but the sheer volume of money that would have to be spent to supply an overactive child with said toys could triple our national debt.

As a former overactive child in that overactive decade of the Eighties, I can suddenly see the extent to which my mom put up with my entitled ass by buying me all these toys, usually for Christmas but also for my birthday and also whenever I felt like pitching a fit in Harper's toy department. The poor woman might have gone broke on my account and never even filled me in because she was fond of me for some damn reason. I don't know that, presented with a similar demand from my hypothetical child in the future, I'd do the same.

I might try to suggest that they settle for the Magic 8-Ball instead, and not use it as a weapon against their younger sister (a vision of which, ascribed not to my hypothetical children but to my very real cousins, kept me from purchasing it for any of them).

That's all I got for now, I'll probably return to navel-gazing whining about life a little later ;-)