Shopping for a one-year old’s birthday is easy.  The stores arrange the toys by age, knowing that babies have no idea what they like anyway.  For example, the “YEAR 1-3” section has a bunch of colorful, battery-powered animals that say cute things.  The only way you can go wrong is if you accidentally buy “Early Naptime” or something.

But I was surprised to see that the years kept on going.  I walked down the aisle and saw YEAR 5-10, YEAR 15-18, and YEAR 20-25.  I walked all the way up to my age, YEAR 30-35, and saw a large comfy chair with a glass of scotch strapped to the armrest.  I sat in it and immediately the voice of Jessica Alba started whispering stock tips.  I thought about buying it, but there was a lot of assembly required.

In shopping for my niece’s present, I learned a lot about what’s popular in the world of babies.  For example, there’s this children’s band called The Wiggles.  For some completely bizarre reason, they have the outfits and the haircuts of actors from the original Star Trek series:

They have books and albums.  It was weird, because after learning about them I started seeing them everywhere: I drove past the Oakland Coliseum and damned if they weren’t coming to play live.  I mentioned this to my sister-in-law, and she said “We could take Cameron to something like that in maybe a few years.”

And this makes me sad, because no children’s band ever lasts that long.  They always break up.  For example, the lead singer refuses to share his instruments, or the drummer develops a bad cake habit.

It’s amazing to me what my brother and his wife are doing to prepare for Cam’s future.  They are interviewing--interviewing--at pre-pre schools.  That’s so they can get into a good pre-school, and then get into a good kindergarten, and so on until they ensure her future.

I think it’s nice they’re doing all this, but I don’t really think it’s necessary.  I never worried about what pre-school I was going to get into; my academic strategy was to stay out of juvenile hall long enough to take the SATs.  And here I am--a completely functioning adult with a rich, meaningful career.

Now I’d better stop blogging; I need to go zone out in a meeting for an hour and then go back to my cube and play Tetris until it’s time to go home.