After we watched this unboxing video, I think that Gabriel was utterly convinced that he wanted to unbox Anki Drive, if nothing else.
When the shit showed up at the office, flanked by various accoutrements, the electronic racing equivalent of bannermen, and addnl. dork fetish gear, I tried my best to get him to open them at that very moment because that is how I enjoy myself. But he wouldn't do it. And not because he didn't want to. He loves gadgets. None of that shit is for anybody but him! It's all his stuff. He'd have bought it all if he didn't have kids. No, no. He was, like, edging these cars or something.
He was engaging in erotic car denial.
I need him to open this stuff because I can't really execute on that stuff the way he can, just… constitutionally, but also because it wouldn't matter if I did. There is no present that would not please my daughter, and there is no present that would please my son. If I kneel down and pick a dandelion for Ronia, she'll put it in her hair and preen and be fairy or whatever. If I gave my son a gold bar, he wouldn't know where to put it. Pockets - front or back - are not up to the task. Eventually I would be asked to hold the Gold Bar and within fifteen minutes he will have forgotten it exists. So it's hard to pull this trick at my house, because a gum wrapper would please one of them and the other doesn't have the receptors for pleasure.
So buying this stuff would be an incredibly transparent ploy that would ultimately result in my playing with this stuff by myself, at night, in a cold garage. It's like a relief map of desire; the children are drained away. All that remains is my own desperate, incalculable need for lego sets from the Lego Movie. The last sentence of this post was originally just the word "lego" in all caps anywhere from seven to twelve times. I have scrupulously refrained.
(CW)TB out.
