xmlns:og='http://ogp.me/ns#' Yeah. Good Times.: How a 5 year old boy says Thank You

Thursday, April 28, 2011

How a 5 year old boy says Thank You

In these parts, when a little kid has a party, you don't go to Target and buy them a gift. I actually really like that about this town, because, honestly? I have enough crap in my house; crap with parts that get lost the minute you cut through the plastic wrapper on the box. Crap that gets scattered around my house; under tables, inside drawers, on the lawn for some reason, all over the place. And the older the kid gets, the smaller the parts apparently get, and the pointier and more painful they become when you step on them with your bare feet. Depending on the age of the kid and the, uh... "politics" of the parent, you generally have one of two options for a little kid birthday party gift.

Option 1: The Book Exchange. This is where you pick a "gently used" book out of your own book collection, wrap it up and bring it. Everybody throws their wrapped gift into a pile and at the end of the party every kid gets to pick a book and bring it home with them. This allows all the children to get a gift, not just the birthday boy or girl. YAY!!

Option 2: Find something in your house, wrap it up and give it as a gift. Why? Something something consumerism something something better for the environment something something.... something. I actually love this option, because it means that I get to go through my house and find some crap I no longer want, and then it becomes your crap and no longer my problem.

None of this is relevant at all to the point of this post, by the way, I just felt like talking about crap for a few paragraphs.

Last week one of Child 2's BFFs had a party and we brought along a little plastic dinosaur (that I spotted on the floor by the front door when we were on our way out and snatched it up because I had completely forgotten about the whole "bring a gift" thing). This week, his buddy gave him a thank you card for the little plastic dinosaur (apparently this is the protocol when you receive wrapped crap. I was not previously aware of this and will try to remember in July when Child 2 turns 6).

I was lucky to be there when the card was handed over and was able to have the child read it to me, otherwise I would have no fucking clue what it says....


And then on the inside, in what is obviously the child's mother's handwriting, it says "thank you for the dinosaur, I bring it into the bath with me."

Adorable.