Catalogs

To my son Tommy,

I have always had a fascination with stuff. Ever since I was young, I would look through catalog after catalog with envy and want. Sometimes I would even end up buying some stuff from these catalogs. Often the gadget I would buy wasn't even half as cool as I imagined it to be or the catalog led me to believe. I often felt like my decoder ring just told me to be sure to drink my ovaltine.

I still have a fascination with magazines and ads and specialty sites. I still drool a bit when I look through sites like ThinkGeek.com or smarthome.com or Hammacher.com. But I came to realize that those companies pay advertising professionals big money to make me willing to part with my money and with that realization, and a couple purchases that turned out to be real lemons, I have developed more self control.

Don't fall for the glitz and glamour of catalogs. You don't need an electronic wine opener when a basic corkscrew will work fine. Enamor yourself with the simple life and put value in love of others not live of objects and things. I still struggle with this but less and less each day as I grow up. I guess that is part of growing up and I can only think if I had learned this lesson and taken it to heart a decade or two ago, I would be so much the better in my life. I hope you don't take as long as I do to learn this lesson of life.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo