Toys R Us archeological find chalks up Birthday Car
“It is time to help Tiger celebrate his second birthday,” Nazy observed.
“Does he understand?” I replied.
“He knows he will get presents.”
“Does it know what he wants?”
“Cars, Dan!” Nazy replied. “He wants cars. Big Cars.”
“Which big cars?”
“All of them, Dan.” Tiger said: “I want them all.”
“Is Melika going to give him her Escalade? Or does he just want my BMW?”
Naturally, a trip to a Toy Store was in order. Nazy, in fact, was very specific:
“We have to go to Toys ‘Я’ Us, Dan. I have ‘store money’.”
“Store money? Where did that come from?”
“I found it in the storage.”
“The Storage? You found something useful in ‘The Storage’?”
“I found 46 ‘Toys ‘R’ Us’ dollars. We got them when we returned a gift for Darius.”
“For Darius? In The Storage?”
“That’s right. We were living in New Hampshire.”
“I remember, we drove to a mall in Manchester and got those ‘dollars’ after we returned something. But that was in the last century. Probably in the 80’s”
“So?”
“So they’ll never take them. No one uses coupons anymore. You need digital currency on your iPhone App.” “Of course they’ll take it.There is no expiration date.”
“You live in a dreamworld, my dear.” I replied sagely.
The Funny Money 
[Because it was Nazy with the ‘dollars’, the sales professional at the local store actually accepted them. I guess I live in a dream world.]
Later, on a Skype call with Darius, we explained what had happened.
“Wow!” Darius said. “I remember that toy store. But — wait a minute! The return of my gift created the money that you spent. That’s not fair.”
"I'll tell Tiger that the things we bought were gifts from you, Dar." i replied.
The most amazing and unbelievable part of the entire experience is the simple fact that something useful was found in The Storage. Things went into storage when we moved to Switzerland in 2001. In fact, some of the things that went into storage in 2001 were unopened boxes that had gone into storage when we moved to Holland in 1989. Since we arrived in California almost four years ago, we’ve thought we might do something about The Storage, but delivering on those thoughts has been problematic. (We did get rid of a few boxes of college textbooks from my time at Georgia Tech.) Nazy has a simple solution …
“We have to find a house with a huge garage, Dan.”
We live close to the Old Mission in Santa Barbara. This is where the annual I Madonnari (chalk painting) festival takes place. This year’s efforts, painted over three days, were especially good. It was particularly impressive for someone like me because:
“My artistic genes,” I explained, “are bifurcated.”
“Bifur..what?” Nazy replied.
“I have lots of ‘art appreciation genes’ and no ‘art creation’ genes,” I continued. “I couldn’t create an enigmatic picture with a camera and the Mona Lisa. But I can do juxtapositions.”
“And that means?”
“Tiger chalk and Tiger pants, my dear.”
Note: The two picture show that the grand(est)son has grown hair, lots of hair, in the last year. I can report that I do not share the hair growth gene.
We celebrated Tiger’s birthday party at “My Gym” with Julianne and bunches of family and friends. Tiger likes “My Gym” activities. He especially likes the trampoline and the slides.
Mitra also came up for the party. Tiger had fun on the ZIPline and chasing bubbles. I had fun eating cupcakes (and eating cupcakes.) It was an especially momentous day: it rained.
“Raining?” Nazy asked dumbfounded.
One of the most entertaining things that I saw at the party was the parents (and friends and grandparents) trying to get the birthday 2 year olds to look at, and smile for, the camera.
For last week's letter, click here
Two pictures below:
Getting the kids to smile
Tiger's Birthday 