Although the winner was chosen through the use of Random.org, I would like to repost his comment here:

This is a great way to keep it going! I love the pay it forward idea. I’ve waited all day to post about this because I wanted to give it some thought. The idea that I came up with was to have my 3 year old go to Walmart and look for gifts to place in the local giving tree at the hospital for a child in need of a christmas gift.

What a cool idea. This will not only pay it forward now, but it will help instill in the future generation a sense of giving and compassion!

Jason said that he will post the result of his daughter’s Pay It Forward, and I’ll be sure to pass the link on here as well. In the meantime, keep your eye on The Devoted Dad!

Way to go, Jason! Feel free to spend the money all in one place!  ;)

Haley Joel Osment in the wonderful 'Pay it Forward' film, demonstrating how this whole thing works...

An amazing thing happened to me yesterday. Calli, Tristin, and I were hanging out while my wife had to go to the doctor for a post-pregnancy checkup.

We wound up going to WalMart and Calli was being absolutely amazing. I’ve never seen such a sweet, well-behaved little girl! So I decided I’d treat her to a $5-$6 toy. Nothing too extravagant, but something to thank her for being so good.

We’re in what I call the pink aisle. You know, the one with Barbie, Strawberry Shortcake, Littlest Pet Shop, My Little Pony, and anything else that comes in a pink box. She said, ‘Daddy I want that one!’ about everything $20 and up. I said a couple of times, ‘Calli, I’m not trying to spend a lot of money.’ It truly wasn’t about the money, it was more about getting her not to want a $20 toy every time we step into a WalMart.

Another customer must have heard me, because she walked by and said, ‘Here,’ slipping something between the cart handle and my hand, ‘maybe this’ll help Daddy out.’

Not even looking, I tried to hand it back, ‘I really don’t need your money!’ I said, both astonished and embarrassed.

‘No.’ she said, backing away. ‘Buy her something.’ and she vanished faster than homemade rolls on Thanksgiving.

I looked down at my hand and got dizzy.

There was a twenty dollar bill staring up at me from my palm.

She had a kid in her cart, too. Not to pass judgment, but she didn’t look any more well off than me. (Though looks can be very deceiving in ski country.)

In this economy, I felt horrible excepting some kind of handout from a complete stranger.

But Calli and I picked out two My Little Ponies, and spent the $20 well.

So here’s what I want to do: Since I can’t pay that nice lady back, I would like to pay this random act of kindness forward.

I’m going to give a $20 WalMart gift card away here on my blog.

What You Have To Do:

Basic blog giveaway stuff, you get one entry per item below:

1. Tweet about the giveaway with a link back to this post.

2. Comment below how you would spend the $20.

3. Include in your comment how you would then pay this good deed forward. (Hint: This does not have to be monetary in nature, get more creative than I did!)

Earn 5 entries if you blog about Random Acts of Kindness or Paying it Forward, and include a link back to this blog. Be sure to comment here to let me know about your post!

I will use random.org to determine the winner. The deadline to enter will be Friday, November 13 (lucky, huh?) at midnight.

If you include your twitter handle in your entries I will

a) follow you for life, and

b) notify you by email and twitter DM if you win! (Another pay it forward, since I recently won a giveaway from Coupon Dad, and missed the email. He DM’ed me to let me know so I wouldn’t miss out on my prize! Thanks again, Coupon Dad!)

Incidentally, the WalMart gift card can come in two forms:

1) The eGift Card Instant gratification! You’ll receive the card through your email in 24-48 hours of winning. This card can be used at walmart.com only. If you choose ‘site to store’ as your shipping option, none of your gift card’s balance will go to shipping! You’ll simply pick up your merchandise at your local store when it arrives.

2) Snail Mail This will take a little longer to receive your winnings, but you’ll be able to use the card at any WalMart store.

For the FTC’s consideration: This giveaway is in no way endorsed or supported by WalMart. I simply chose a WalMart gift card because that is where the above related random act of kindness took place. The money is my own hard-earned cash that I am using to help spread a little holiday cheer…

Look at that face. Poor homeless thing is miserable...

By now, I’m sure you are all aware of the blogosphere’s outcry against Gwen, the homeless American Girl doll.

If not, than essentially what you need to know is that Gwen’s deadbeat dad left her and her mom to live in their car. She meets a girl named Chrissy, who enjoys keeping the bullies from picking on Gwen’s sad plight.

OK. Fine. So the controversy amounts to Dads who think this doll puts fathers in a bad light. What if this doll’s story gives little girls a reason to distrust men? Also on the blog rant table is the price tag. This is a $95 doll. That’s homeless. If you were homeless, what would you do with $95? You probably wouldn’t buy a doll.

This issue was brought to light for me on a blog that’s now on my ‘never miss’ list: Clark Kent’s Lunchbox, in a post entitled ‘Why I “Hate” Mattel Toys’ CEO , Robert Eckert’. It again beckoned to me from Dadcentric, in a post called ‘Daughter, Can You Spare An American Girl Doll?’. So I said fine, sure, if everyone else is jumping off of the American Girl cliff I can too.

But as I thought about it, I came up with this crazy idea:

What if a homeless American Girl doll with a deadbeat dad isn’t such a bad thing?

No. No. Two bloggers whom I admire have told me that I shouldn’t buy in to this. This is crazy, why would I even think this way?

Justification? Validation, perhaps?

Perhaps…

When my nearly 16 year old step-daughter was younger, she played with American Girl dolls. Her first one was bought by her aunt and grandmother. Molly was the girl at the time that closely resembled Kat, so that’s what she got. I thought it was cool because she’s from the WWII era. Her father is off to war and she dreams of a better world back home. Kat and I used to look at the books together and talk about WWII and the lessons we could learn from it and Molly’s story. Sure, the stories were basic, but, that’s what a kid reads to foster deeper reading later on. She had this one Molly book that was almost all pictures from the WWII era. I got to read about the doll with her and look at WWII era planes. Win/win.

So back to Gwen and my paralyzing ability to see all sides of an argument. As I thought about Gwen, I remembered a poem my parents kept on the fridge as I was growing up. It was called ‘Children Learn What They Live‘. Essentially it says that if you praise them, they’ll appreciate goals, if you love them they’ll be loving, etc. Which is true, but I also hold onto another theory. I also believe that children learn the opposite. They learn what not to do.

Here is my hope for the owners of Gwen: From her story I do hope girls are more cautious about the men they choose to bring into their lives. As they start dating, a little caution will not be a bad thing. They won’t want to end up like Gwen’s mom, living in a car with a child, so they may give a little more thought into dating the ‘bad boy’.

As for the price tag? Are we being too short sighted? The idea that many have put forth is that if you’re spending $95 on a doll, you’re probably some richie-rich that should be donating to the poor. I beg to differ. After Molly started an obsession for us, we ordered one of the custom dolls: ordering Kat’s exact hair and eye color, to instill narcissism I guess… We were anything but rich. We just thought the way any consumer thinks: higher price tag, higher quality. I’m always amazed at people that absolutely will not buy electronics at Wal-Mart. As if Wal-Mart arbitrarily slaps ‘Sony’ on an ‘Orion’. A Sony’s a Sony. An American Girl doll must be quality if you’re shelling out 100 clams, right? For the sake of argument, let’s say that mother is rich, and the daughter begins to feel like all that excess may not be necessary. As she grows, the story of Gwen haunts her. In school, she’ll be more sensitive to other kids. She won’t be a bully, and maybe even stand up for the kids who are bullied. When she grows up and has kids, she maybe spends a little less on the excess and takes her children to homeless shelters and soup kitchens, demonstrating to her kids that they can live a better way…

I may be a little too optimistic for my own good. I guess the point I’m trying to make is that our kids aren’t going to go south due to the toys they play with. I grew up looking at Garbage Pail Kids, and I only wipe my boogers on the couch every once in a while. I turned out just fine. There will always be dubious toys out there. If you’re that opposed, don’t buy it. If you’re kids have to have it, be there to guide them.

In the end, that’s all that really matters.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Row over new ‘homeless’ doll (telegraph.co.uk)
• American Girl’s Homeless Girl Doll Causes Stir (shoppingblog.com)
• Meet Gwen, the ‘Homeless’ American Girl (abcnews.go.com)
• “Homeless” American Girl Doll Costs $95 [Crass] (consumerist.com)
• The Newest American Girl Doll Has A Secret [American Girls] (jezebel.com)

Registration is on the 10th, so even though Wal-Mart is already pushing the last of the school supplies out the door, it hasn’t even sunk in for me that it’s back to school time at all!

Another weird thing is that even though she’s a Sophomore, this will be her first year in a real high school.

I probably shouldn’t say ‘real’. How about ‘traditional’. Last year, she went to an ‘expeditionary high school’. This meant that the students didn’t always stay in the classroom. If they were studying geology, they’d climb a mountain and find rocks, they took a trip to Denver to explore different careers, etc.

The teacher to student ratio was somewhere in the ball park of 1 in 12, meaning that no kid really got lost in the pack.

The classes were pretty cool, too. They would study a topic and the teachers blended subjects in to that one topic. For example, they could be studying World War 2. Naturally, there’s history and social studies in there, but you could also discuss the workings of the Bomb and nuclear energy in science. Pretty cool.

The thing was that it actually seemed to not challenge Kat enough. She did great, but it was a small school with really no extra-curricular activities.

So this year she’s going back to a traditional environment, where the teacher to student ratio is probably 1 in 30, classes are completely separate from each other, and Kat can spend all her time after school staying after for play practice or whatever other interest suits her fancy.

I can’t help but wonder if we’re doing the right thing. This was a choice we all made together, and Kat is excited about it.

But is all this change good for her?

Then I think of all the changes that have felt forced upon me in my adult life. My job has been restructured so many times that I’ve lost count. I adapted and evolved, albeit begrudgingly. At least she’s getting a choice, and this is what she chose. I trust her and know she’ll excel in whatever she does, I just like to be the worrying father every once in a while.  ;)

Good luck, kid!

Anyway, this area includes the shampoo aisle, which we reset last week. I had never really paid that much attention to it before, but there is a LOT of ‘flavors’ of shampoo out there! I started thinking about that. Is all that shampoo really necessary? Just for cheap giggles, here’s a run down of what I have found in the shampoo aisle:

There is a special shampoo for long hair! Really? Does long hair have a different chemical makeup than short hair? I had no idea. 

Axe makes a shower scrub for men called ‘Snake Peel‘. Have you ever been walking in the woods and found a bit of shed snake skin? Did you then pick it up and rub it all over your body, knowing that it would wow the ladies? Me niether.

Herbal Essences has a ‘self-targeting’ shampoo. This one I’m all for. All I’d have to do is open the bottle and the shampoo would find my hair?! But then I pause, what sorcery is this? What maniacal technology has Herbal Essences employed? Nanotechnology in hair care products sounds like a step toward world domination. With a trembling hand, I place the bottle back on the shelf, being careful not to disturb the other bottles…

It makes me think of Lewis Black’s routine about Milk and Water (not for younger listeners!)

Really, I love a good variety, but is all of this really necessary?

Did you know Mountain Dew has different varieties now? There’s a Peep for every holiday, not just Easter? I saw Valentine candy corn this year. Valentine. Candy CORN!?

It’s not that I’m against capitalism or consumerism. I’m an American, after all. I enjoy loud music too, but I tend to turn the volume down every now and again.

On the ‘Daddy’ side of things, I tend to spoil my kids, but still try to instill some sense of, ‘Maybe you don’t need that!’ I swell with a sense of pride when my two year old understands that life will go on without that bobble that will just wind up on a shelf. But when she does recieve something, her eyes light up and that thing is her favorite thing for a good long while. AND she doesn’t forget to include her old toys in the fun as well.

Maybe the repetitive viewings of Toy Story has taught her something!  ;)

My hope is that we as adult consumers, being faced with these tough economic tomes, will be forced to take a step back and think, ‘Maybe I don’t need that…’ Then maybe, just maybe, when things do turn around, the corporations will have spent some time thinking, ‘Maybe we don’t need to develop new flavors of fruit flavored energy drinks that slowly kill you. Maybe we won’t develop the animal excrement body wash. Maybe that’s not what the world needs right now.’

One can only hope.