Is that a kid’s wish list or a demand?
I realize this is no laughing matter, but I think I hate my kids.
And just in time for the holidays.
My kids are 13, 12 and 10; thus they are at an age where they can read my columns. Given that the entire seventh grade class at Greenwich Academy has taken to reading my columns aloud during my daughter’s study hall, I know I’ll have hell to pay for this one. It’s a matter of time before full-blown censorship takes hold. Please know that if I begin articles with “I realize this is no laughing matter, but screen time is actually good for our children and should never be limited” — that means I’m tied to a chair somewhere and the kids have taken over. We’re talking bowdlerization that would make Litvinenko blush. (Look it up, Selma; it’s a good one.)
This year for Hanukkah, which conveniently started the last day of Thanksgiving break (thanks Moses), Selma assembled a list of what gifts she would like for each of the eight nights, complete with links to Amazon “for my convenience.” The list included pajamas from a store involving a rabbit on roller-skates, Lululemon “hotty hot” shorts and other such educational items.
When I suggested we use one night for Tzedakah (the Jewish tradition of charity), she looked at me in shock. “You didn’t get the hotty hots, I KNEW it,” she hollered. Gift-giving seasons are never a good time to feel the full dimensions of your children’s gratitude and appreciation, granted. But it’s completely out of control this year and I’m not talking about just for privileged families in Greenwich.
Amazon (which 90 percent of Americans will hit up this holiday season across all income brackets, according to the New York Times) and other online retail outfits are making it easier to buy gifts way offbudget by offering monthly installment payment plans. You remember the payment plans used for car and home purchases? This year people are using these installment plans to buy items such as a “Buttkicker Gamer2.” After all, when the CyberpowerPC Gamer Xtreme VR Gaming PC, Intel i5-10400F 2.9GHz, GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB, 8GB DDR4, 500GB NVMe SSD, Wi-Fi Ready & Windows 10 Home (GXiVR8060A10) is available in monthly payments installments over three years, who cares that it’s $1,229?
“Hello, how can I help you today, Claire?” Cheryl from the Best Buy asked me. How she knew my name remains unclear.
“Look, I want to get something my kids can play games on,” I told her.
“Right.” Cheryl clearly knew she was in for a ride.
“I guess there’s something better than an Xbox? It’s like a PC but good for gaming or something?” I asked.
Cheryl and I then spent 45 minutes discussing Gamer PCs, which is all the rage because we are apparently experiencing a global run on “Graphic Cards,” so everywhere is sold out.
“Look,” I told Cheryl, “I want something basic that will work but won’t cost me a lot of money.”
Cheryl calmly explained that most decent gaming PCs start at $700 and above, and that is not including the monitor, keyboard, warranty or mouse.
I asked if Best Buy sold refurbished or used Gaming PCs, because these “were just kids after all.”
Apparently the gaming PCs starting at $700 (and good luck if you can find one) ARE the refurbished ones — or what Best Buy calls “Open Box” — which means that someone opened the packaging tried it, didn’t like it and returned it.
“But we can’t guarantee it will still work,” she told me. “The thing about these PC Gaming computers is you need at least 16GB of memory with at least an RX3060” (but whatever you do, DO NOT get the RTX). Better yet, gamers who want the “full gaming experience” should but something called “Nvidia,” which sounds like a fungal infection.
“It’s all about Nvidia GE Force,” Cheryl told me, “because you don’t want your kid to have ‘lag time.’ ”
“What if they already have it?”
“Your kids already have the Nvidia GE Force?,” she asked, surprised.
“No, lag time; they have a lot of that,” I told her.
Apparently, gaming lag time means if your friend has a graphic card that outranks yours, it will be hard to play successfully because you will “lag behind” other players. George’s best friend had recently received a “divorce dad gift” which was some mega CyperPower PC situation that lit up with giant discs and looked vaguely intergalactic (thanks, divorced dad). To make matters worse, this was a Greenwich divorce gift and every time the boys gathered, the PC was like an altar of worship; there was no question George was going to lag.
And the thing about all this gift giving is that it doesn’t necessarily correlate with behavior anymore. The concept that Santa “sees you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake” started to sound vaguely perverted post Me Too and so now we’ve got entitled, pandemic, environmentally doomed kids sitting at home with sweatshirts that say things like “Post Hope” … just waiting for their loot. Our former babysitter remembers the day she actually got coal for Christmas.
“I’ll never forget the little bag it came in,” she told us.
Try that in these parts now and the Department of Children and Families gets involved.
“And given the global supply chain crisis, good luck finding coal,” my husband added.
“Until my children’s effort in changing their attitudes to something that I can tolerate matches my effort of how I go above and beyond to make things happen for them, NO phones,” a friend told me recently.
“That’s never going to happen,” I told her (because it isn’t).
But it got me thinking; what would it look like if the tables were turned? What if Louie never had hot water due to my hourlong showers? And just imagine Selma being forced to pick up wet towels all day, in between driving a minivan around at my every whim (which changes a lot and for no apparent reason)? What if George lived like an unpaid short-order chef and anything-but-devices cruise director 24-7?
And you know what? Just like that, my love came back.
Good luck with that coal … .