The Very Sad Conclusion to the Walmart Fiasco

I’d been losing sleep over this whole Walmart gift card situation. We boycott Walmart, but my father gave my two children each a $25 gift certificate to the Satan of retail chains. The best comment on my earlier posting to this blog suggested that we buy 50 dollars worth of non-perishable food products and then give them to the local foodbank. I was sold. Great idea, at least the best way out of this dilemma. But I decided (on the advice of Therese) to present the options to our children, as after all technically the gift cards were for them. It didn’t take too long for the kids to decide that they would rather buy toys for themselves than food for hungry people, even though we’ve seen several homeless people sleeping lately on the sidewalks and my 9-year-old daughter has commented on how tragic that whole situation is. But anyway, we went to Walmart, and after two hours of hell they bought a video game and many action figures. There was still $17 dollars left over of the original 50, and I hoped they would choose to spend this on the foodbank, but they decided to get one last toy. In the end we had 23 cents left on the gift cards, which we threw away, and I am so glad to finally be over with the whole Christmas/Walmart situation. I didn’t like the end result, but I am so thankful that it is over. This mirrors (sort of) how I feel about the presidential election of 2004.