Valentine

S came home from the nursery and asked what a 'Valentine' was. It's usually an adjective - Valentine's day, Valentine's card. I didn't know what a valentine nous was so I looked it up. Obviously, a Valentine is a sweetheart (as in 'be my Valentine').

That didn't help, because S said we have to buy a Valentine for every other child in the nursery. All 30 of them. So a Valentine is some sort of present. So we have to buy 30 presents, and (30 * 29 / 2) - 1 = 434 presents will be exchanged at the nursery. (The -1 is there, because A and D won't give one to each other).

Apart from the drain on the non-renewable resources of the world, does this mean that each child is going to go home with 29 items of tat. (Given that no one's going to spend much on each one, it's hardly going to be something that you are going to keep and hand down to the grandchildren.)

Well, this is America, and capitalism came to the rescue (with help from an artificially depressed Chinese Yuan, and a sweatshop near Beijing). S went shopping at the supermarket and came home with a box of "Valentines". 27 of them, for $2.99. They are little cards with 3D pictures on, the kind that change when you look at them from different angles. With pictures of dogs and cats.

Hooray for the globalization and the free market economy, that's all I can say.