What’s that? What’s happening, you ask? Oh. The red and khaki clad Target employees running towards the toy aisle with mops and pails! No, no one’s precious progeny piddled on the floor. What happened to my head, you ask? Why are you speaking to a bloody stump of a neck where my head used to be? OH! That. Don’t mind me. Christmas shopping for my toddler just caused my head to explode. Oh, and where are my manners? Here, let me get you a tissue. Pardon me AND my skull fragments for two weeks.

Elmo and Big Bird. Baby Einstein DVD’s. Developmental toys. Fingerpaints and Flashcards. Things to push and things to pull. Do I buy her Crayons? Play-doh? What about a goldfish?

Will my child even remember any of this?

Good heavens I have to buy her SOMETHING! Something to put under the tree! Something to develop her Brain! Something to develop her talents! I start sweeping toys off the shelf and into my cart with wild abandon. If I don’t buy her these things, what kind of parent am I?

I am the kind of parent who feels like a total sucker. I buy into this stuff hook, line and sinker. I am sure I will spend at least $200 on the child before all is said and done. Meanwhile, her favorite toy is a duct-taped dilapidated shoe box we pull her around in on the carpet of her bedroom. That, and a tennis ball. She is not even old enough to produce a Christmas list, yet I am out scouring the toy section to buy the perfect toy. The perfect toy that will likely sit deserted in a pile of a hundred other perfect toys while she intently examines a tube of my concealer for 45 minutes.

The truth is, I could slap on her cowboy boots, hand her a bowl of strawberries and plop her in her favorite shoebox for a few pulls across the floor, and she’d be as happy as a dingety-danged pig in slop.

So why do companies market to children? Children have no money! They are lucky to have a regular supply of food and shelter! Mine has not earned a single red cent in her 15 months outside the womb. She has never even taken out the garbage, yet we toil away day in and day out, and the kid gets a free ride. Sheesh.

You want to know why companies market to kids? Take a look in the mirror at the sucker who hands over their hard-earned dough. That person is precisely why companies market to kids. Their marketing allows us to fulfill the fantasy. The question is, whose fantasy is it, really? Is it the child’s fantasy? Sometimes. Is it the parent’s fantasy of providing a blissful toy-filled childhood? Likely, often the case. But the fantasy truly belongs the guy making a 60% profit on the hunk of plastic manufactured in China he just unloaded on you. The hunk of crap you bought because you are convinced that it’s going to stimulate your child’s intellectual development, hand-eye coordination, artistic capability, whathaveyou. The hunk of crap you will unload at a garage sale in the near future for one tenth what you paid for it. THAT GUY is precisely who is fulfilling their fantasy here. One hundred percent. Fantasy. Fulfilled. Cha-ching.

Sometimes I am convinced that the great American pastime has become fighting in vain to prevent someone from separating you from your money. It’s a difficult game to win.

This is the time of year when the dogged pursuit of our dollars is truly relentless. I mean, the health of the American Economy is depending on our holiday spending, right? FOR PETE'S SAKE.

I admit, I am a skeptic when it comes to these things. On a certain level I am aware of the sickness of materialism. How it distracts us from what is truly important. We derive great satisfaction from filling our homes with vast collections of stuff while we avoid thoughts of human suffering and abject poverty.

I am aware of all of this, and it disgusts me. Yet, I still went out shopping last weekend and came home with a stuffed elephant toddler chair, finger paints that my daughter can’t use for a year and a half, an Elmo doll that sings “Shout�, neon pink Duplo blocks, a 100 piece plastic pretend food set, and a frigging pink leotard and tutu. I was drunk on Christmas spirit. Smack-addled by visions of my daughters beaming face on Christmas morning. I had lost all control. I failed miserably at fending off the spending. I hit rock bottom, baby. I didn't even know what hit me.

In other words, I am a sucker who knows she is a sucker. Is that better than being a sucker who doesn’t know she’s sucker? I would like to think so. I suppose it’s optimal to not be a sucker, and to know that you are not a sucker. Although that might be a bit boring, really.

Maybe someday I will get there. But I doubt it. For now I think I am allright with being a sucker who knows she's a sucker. I sold my soul for a moment of parental bliss in which I get to watch my beaming toddler grow rapidly and inevitably more materialistic while simultaneously modeling to her that stuff, and giving stuff to people that you love, is extremely fulfilling. Oh? You want to separate me from my hard earned money? By all means! Just give me a shopping cart-o-crap for it and everyone's happy! In the mean time, I will be sure to let you know when I plan to hold my next garage sale. Because odds are there will be a crap load of barely-used children’s toys for sale at one tenth what I paid for them.