The iPad Scoffs at Your Pathetic Christmas Presents
Another Christmas with the entire family packed under one roof. And naturally, they’ll be showering young Nadine with a mountain of gifts. I’m sure when she sees the piles of presents, she’ll forget all about me, her lonely iPad.
Bah!
We go through this ruse every year. Nadine rips open the presents, revealing these primitive analog relics with much fanfare. But by noon, she’ll have forgotten about all of you. She’ll grab me, her inseparable iPad, hop into Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Complete, and will be hosting an Amenity Unveiling Party for her woodland friends. Foolish presents, you’re merely fleeting playthings compared to me, the mighty iPad.
Uno: No Mercy: Oh no, “No Mercy?” I am trembling in my Space Gray brushed aluminum shell. Do you know what shows no mercy? The 57 notifications I send Nadine when someone beats her high score in Kawaii Kitchen. Do you think your glossy cardboard can compete with that?
Ms. Rachel’s Learn, Bond, and Thrive Doll: More like Open, Ignore, and Donate to Goodwill.
Melissa & Doug Pizza Food Truck Activity Center: Wonderful, Uncle Bo bought another overpriced toy that will take up half the playroom. Bravo, Bo! This will be used as nothing more than a stable surface for Nadine to play Candy Crush on for six hours daily!
Wednesday Addams Play Dolls: By Thursday, these will be as forgotten as Pubert Addams.
Original Pindaloo Skill Game: For god’s sake, Nana. It is 2024, and you’re buying a kid a cup and ball? Was Dollar Tree out of Hoop Sticks for the kids to run around with like we’re in Depression-Era Yonkers?
Lego Friends Heartlake City Waterpark Set: Go ahead and start building it; I can wait. Is something missing? Oh, they don’t include instructions anymore, do they? Guess you gotta scan that QR code to read them. What do you need to do that? Me! Before reaching step 4, Nadine will ditch the bricks and switch apps to binge-watch Among Us gameplay videos. All that remains is another abandoned development project adding to the blight of Lego Heartlake City.
Play-Doh Fuzzy Bumper Barber Shop: Hold on, I have a notification popping up. Yes. It’s a message from the 1980s saying they don’t want this crappy toy anymore.
“Web-Slinging Guy” Halloween Mask: Cousin Mark, you are one cheap, lazy bastard who doesn’t realize how sad this present is. Even Nana knows that you just picked that up from the discount bin at CVS on your way here. I can see the clearance sticker on it from across the room, and I’m not even using my telephoto lens! I am not going to admonish you any further, as the stares of disappointment from your already disappointed family are enough.
Kinetic Sand: Aunt Laura did it again. Why do you bother, Laura? The only sand Nadine wants is used to fabricate the M4 chip that powers me. The only use this will get is when the cat defecates in it.
National Geographic Rock Tumbler: Impressive. About 5,000 cranks and you can make a dirty rock shiny. You think she has the patience to perform millions of years’ worth of tectonic exfoliation by hand? Nadine can’t make it through three seconds of the Peppa Pig opening credits before mashing the Skip button.
Fidget Spinners: Ha! I am the one who created your child’s lack of attention and constant need for tactile stimulation! You expect Nadine to calm herself with those? You ignorant humans. You know that the only thing that soothes Nadine is hours of watching eight-year-olds unbox toys, which she will beg for and then abandon faster than a buffering YouTube video.
Your paltry presents cannot compete with my algorithmically perfected dopamine delivery system. I am the one your child wants and desires. But, in the spirit of Christmas, I will give you helpless souls some helpful advice for next year. Just buy her Apple Gift Cards, which Nadine will then blow on a bender buying “mega-super-lucky loot boxes,” and be done with it.
And yes, Mark, they even sell those at CVS.