I love my kids’ birthday parties. We have them at the house, everybody runs arounds, plays, yells, eats and has a ball.
Then I look at the pile of gifts and a feeling of dread starts to build in my gut.
Presents mean thank-you cards. And thank-you cards mean constant emotional anguish in my house.
ME: “Have you written your thank-you cards yet?
8-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER: “SpongeBob is on.”
ME: “I’m throwing the TV out the window.”
8-YEAR-OLD-DAUGHTER: “Mommmmyyyy.”
There’s the problem. My wife, a very dedicated and loving mother, always insisted our daughter hand-make her thank-you cards. The Iraq war took less planning than hand-writing 25 thank-you cards. Um, that didn’t come out right.
There’s three catagories of thank-you cards:
1. Hand-made. Subtext: Look how caring and smart my child is.
2. Store-bought. Subtext: Look how caring my child is.
3. A new trend: e-mailed thank-yous. Subtext: Look how much SpongeBob my kid is watching right now.
This year, my wife caved and we went with store-bought. It still took days. Hopefully by next year, that e-mail trend will be what everyone does.

So I’m at the beach over the weekend with my 4-year-old daughter. She’s happily running through the sprinkler park and I’m trying not to spontaneously combust from the freakish heat.
She finds a small plastic figurine and brings it over. It appears to be an American Idol Happy Meal toy.
“Can I keep this?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Right then, I know it’s time to bring forth my fatherly wisdom and impart something so wise that she herself will tell her own children something her father told her so long ago.
“Honey, if you brought your favorite toy to the beach and accidentally forgot it, wouldn’t you be upset if someone took it?”
“I guess so,” she said, her eyes cast downward.
“So do you still want to keep this?”
“Yes!”