This is the time of year when you're of two minds about finances. You want to be generous, even magnanimous when gifting family and friends (okay in my case, just family) but you also strive to be fiscally responsible.
My parents had a minivan worth of kids in the era before minivans. So growing up we had a fleet of station wagons, like a Chrysler Newport that I learned to drive that was long enough to have its own helipad on the roof and, innovation of innovation, rear-facing third-row seats that my brother Kelly and I exploited to make faces at the motorists behind us on the highway.
Mom was in charge of Christmas and with that many All I Want lists, some hard decisions had to be made as the Big Day approached. Each of us had a big-ticket item and even those of us too young to know where and how the big-ticket items materialized understood there were limits.
For instance, I could have a baseball mitt or a dress shirt for school, but not necessarily both. And sometimes, as happened in a family with active children, someone put a knee through a pair of dungarees (we didn't call them 'jeans' then) and emergency purchases had to be made which would cause Mom to offer to everyone, and no one simultaneously, 'that's coming out of your Christmas.'
I thought about that yesterday when faced with having to purchase another and different set of orthotics, this time not because of my compressed discs in the spine but from the plantar fasciitis and bone spur in the sole of my left foot from too many years of compensating for the bends and twists in the spine.
I found the best price, though still pricey to my uneducated eye, at Jeff Bezos' operation, When I went, reluctantly, to pay for it, discovered I already had an item in my shopping cart for purchase, Except, as I learned decades earlier, with more wants than wallet, I had to pick as wisely and well as possible.
Yep, those Superfeet Green insoles are coming out of my Christmas.
-bill kenny
