You want what? To do what?

More and more frequently these days, I have begun to develop a greater respect for my parents. Why? Is it because of their personal sacrifice? Their never-ending source of love? Their support of my academic pursuits?

No.

While all of those are wonderful, I have come to respect them for a much simpler reason. They never punched me in the face when I asked for stupid shit. This may seem like such a simple gesture that would be easily accomplished by most adults, but let's look at the issue a little closer.

There must be a fountain that exists in some distant land with the sole purpose of spewing out a never-ending stream of crappy ideas for children's toys. "Toys" may be an inaccurate description; perhaps we'd be better off with "things we can convince children that they need more than water, food, or shelter". It must be the job of one lonely Mattel executive to stroll out to the fountain each day, fill up a bucket, and haul the glorious array of toy ideas back to his office to be sorted. Then the best 5 get presented to a board of executives to be decided on.

"Do we really think there's a market for sand that doesn't get wet? We also have an oven that cooks brownies with a 60 watt light bulb; yeah that one's OK."

Lindsey and I were talking about how her mom used to bribe her with beanie babies. The concept of beanie babies was simple enough. Each type has its own story... blah blah blah... basically like the cabbage patch for creatures. The worst part about beanie babies was the fact that I could convince my parents to purchase tag protection plastic cases so that the tag wouldn't fold over and reduce its resale value. Aside from the fact that I was too possessive to part with the beanie babies while they were still popular and their value now is next to nothing (I think you could probably rip them apart and use their guts as cat litter), I am wondering why I was concerned about the resale value of a stuffed animal when I was 11. ARE YOU SERIOUS? I would backhand my kid so quickly if they asked for money for a tag protector and scream "You're not 85 years old! Go put those toys away but be really quiet so you don't wake up your creepy Furby that I hid in the back of your closet."

Another perfect example of this crap is Pogs. According to most people it was a "game" that kids played in the 90s. According to me and all of my friends, it was the process of collecting and trading cardboard circles with pictures on them for a couple of hours before we got bored and played with our favorite toy - monopoly money. I even remember my favorite one (magic 8 ball) to look at on the floor or to stack on top of many other useless cardboard disks. Seriously though, I remember making my parents buy plastic containers to hold hundreds of pogs that I never played with. Not once. Never.

When I start popping out dependents, this will not be the case. If my kids come up to me and ask for money to buy crumpled up paper or used toothpicks, they are getting what they deserve: a laugh in the face and 2 months of summer school.