Speaking as one who grew up in the middle of a cornfield, and feels a little homesick at a chorus of "Friends in Low Places" I gotta say, I'd borrow her patriotic stripper heels. They'd be a big hit at the corn boil.

I see your Drakkar Noir and I raise you POLO SPORT. The 13/14 year old girl in me still loves this smell and fills me with the fresh memories off all my first make out sessions.

Am I the only person that pronounces it cawlk, not cock?

Jeez, it's a TV show, not a vaccine. I can wait a few weeks.

IT JUST CAME OUT YESTERDAY WHY ARE YOU MAD AT ME

I know, right? "I'm not Scottish." You might be cooler if you were, T-Boz. Scotland is pretty awesome.

It hasn't happened yet, and it isn't a gift to me, but it fits the bill: 40 years ago, my grandmother lost my dad's prized childhood possession (a little league baseball where he collected his MLB heroes' autographs in the 1950s.) Three weeks ago, a relative found it hidden in the rafters in my grandmother's old…

My mom knocked one of my gifts out of the park this year. I collect vintage Fisher Price Little People, and my mom found a vintage Sesame Street Little People neighborhood while she was at Goodwill and bought it for me. It didn't have any of the furniture or characters, so she showed me the gift early so I could buy…

Just the other day I went to a last minute dinner thing at my bf's mother's house. I didn't realize that this was their "we can't all be together for Christmas so we're doing Christmas early" dinner until I got there. Everyone starts passing gifts from under the tree and I'm totally ready to hang back and just watch…

(Note: I'm an adult - so they tell me - but I still live at home) All through my teenage years I loved listening to my parent's old EPs (and some of my own), but a couple years ago our record player broke. My mom had left shortly before this and with only half the income coming in since then, we haven't been able to…

This isn't a Christmas gift story and it isn't one I share frequently, but it was a beautiful moment and I want to share it somehow. My best friend had passed away a few weeks before this happened and her mom told me that before she passed, she said that she wanted her belongings to go to her friends. Her mom invited…

I never had Barbies as a kid. But now that I'm an adult, I actually appreciate the concept of Barbie.

WAT? BUT I LOVED HIM.

Papa John's: because it's not too late to make one more bad decision.

Do you need postage for the USPS to deliver to Santa? In Canada you can send an unstamped letter and it still gets to him and he writes back in whatever language you wrote to him in (even Braille). Santa loves Canadians.

I feel your pain. Every year we tell our selves that this is the year we are going to scale back and every year we fail. My kid loves two things - LEGOs and trains. For two years now he has asked for the Lego passenger train. We have always said no it is too expensive, well this year he threw down the gauntlet, he…

Seriously, as a child with a young girl, Monster High FUCKING BLOWS. It's what happens when some dickhead toy executive combines Twilight, Barbie, and every shitty Disney Channel teen sitcom. The ultimate focus group-driven garbage ever.

I have to disagree. I got told I was smart a lot when I was a kid. It was usually for things that were really easy for me, and over time I got the idea that having to struggle at something meant I was dumb... that's kid-logic for you. So I tended to give up easily and avoid things that were too challenging, because I…

The problem is that "smart" isn't a remark about effort applied, or even about performance on an assignment. Being smart is an intrinsic quality, and a badge of praise that can backfire if faced with some kind of evidence of failure. One bad grade on a test or dumb mistake can either lead to fear of losing that…

I agree that if you make an effort to balance it and REALLY encourage risk-taking/challenging themselves it can be okay to tell the kid that they're smart. But most the time at young ages gifted kids get praised for being smart even when it had NOTHING to with hard work. So they get a little older and hit that…