Toys and Happy Meals

This blog was originally posted on December 4, 2008 at http://www.parentclick.com/BlogPost.html?id=835:

Today, on the way home from preschool, my three-year-old son Riley asked me to turn down the radio.

"Daddy, does McAlister's have Happy Meals with cars?" he asked. We had eaten at McAlister's two days before. As usual, Riley noshed on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

"No, McAlister's does not have Happy Meals," I said.

"But why?" he said.

I was ready to launch into a diatribe about rampant consumerism, and lecture about mass marketing and how some restaurants sold toys to make up for the lack of quality in their food, so that little kids like him would want to go there all the time, or that sucker parents (a group I consider myself a member of) would want to take them, in a blatant effort to a) save time and money, b) relive our own childhood through our children, or c) look like a cool mommy or daddy.

I decided against this course, however. "They just don't like to sell toys," I told him.

"But McAlister's likes toys, too," he reasoned. Can't argue with that.

"Yes, they like toys, but they just don't like to sell them" (Hey, best I could come up with.).

After just a brief moment of pause, his last gasp. "Why not?"

I was done. He had backed me into the corner with his own, undeniably sound three-year-old logic in which he's learned to trust. And why not? It's gotten him out of plenty of scrapes in the past, situations like "that's my toy Mikey just took," or a sly, crooked-toothed grin after he let loose a swear word. I had nothing.

"Because they just like to sell food, bud."

And like that, it was enough. He'd been satisfied, and we had what was probably our first two-way grown-up conversation, as juvenile and simplistic as it was, he reasoned with him, pleaded his case, and, finally, was satisfied with an answer.