The Gift-Laden Tourist
Speaking of ‘and all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ what's this new custom where you’re supposed to bring everybody presents when you go away? My parents never did that, maybe because they never went away except for a yearly business trip to New York when they’d send us kids a postcard of a hotel with an arrow pointing to some room on the 27th floor.Me I’m just back from Italy where I bought nothing but the meals I ate (which come to think of it stands in great contrast to the last time I went when our foodie kids had us practically sewing ten-pound hunks of cheese and cured meats into the hems of our coats.) Truth is I can’t stand all that trinket-buying. It’s just so wasteful! And mindless! I mean did you really want a hand towel with the Royal Family on it? Does your kid really need a Sea World T-shirt?As the lawns grow ever stiffer with cold you can feel us getting closer to the mass delirium of holiday shopping. Yet the happiest people I know these days seem to be the ones who have a kind of lottery at the holidays and give their one person the coolest thing they can come up with for under 25 bucks.Maybe my family will do that this year, buy our little ones a bunch of cheap little gizmos and spend the rest of the time playing board games and shooting the breeze. Keep it simple as the man said. Let our home be our mast and not our anchor. Because otherwise, think about it: who's gonna dust all THIS? 
