A couple of weeks ago, we had Court and his family over for dinner. We were discussing some of the trials and tribulations the world is facing these days (I’m looking at YOU, omicron variant). At some point, 13-year-old Kaiya proclaimed, “Well, you know, we can blame it on Jeff Bezos. In fact, we can blame all of the world’s problems on Jeff Bezos. It’s a conspiracy.” We all stopped talking and looked at her.

I’m happy to say that she was joking, although it did make me wonder just what the teachers are planting in our young peoples’ minds these days. For one thing, when I was 13 years old, I knew little of what was going on in the world and a lot of what boy was the cutest and what was the number one record. I’m not claiming that is a good thing, but just sayin….

The fact that she knows who Jeff Bezos is isn’t surprising. While I don’t think Mr. Bezos is responsible for all of the world’s problems, I do think his company has impacted the world about as much as any company ever has. I thought about this yesterday afternoon as I did some of my Christmas shopping without leaving my house. I shopped Amazon of course.

For good or for bad, I can’t imagine life without Amazon. I recall the “olden days” when I had to actually leave my house and enter a shopping mall in order to purchase, well, just about anything related to Christmas. Timing was everything. Too early and your loved ones hadn’t given you their list. Too late and you had to deal with the crowds.

I remember one such visit very clearly. I had forgotten to purchase a present for someone important. My plan was to buy a gift card from a big department store. No problem, except you couldn’t buy the gift card online in those days. That, in and of itself, wouldn’t have been a problem, except for the fact that it was Christmas Eve Day. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had forgotten to purchase a present. I recall circling the Park Meadows Mall several times without seeing a SINGLE AVAILABLE PARKING SPOT. Park Meadows Mall is huge, as is its parking lot. I finally decided to go to Plan B, though I was clueless as to what Plan B looked like. It took me 45 minutes to get out of the parking lot.

As it turned out, Plan B was Amazon. While I couldn’t buy a gift card to wrap up and put in her hands, what I could do, even as far back as then, was to go on Amazon and email a digital gift card.

Thanks Jeff Bezos.

I don’t know what all of us would have done during the quarantine without Jeff Bezos’ brilliant idea. You can buy ANYTHING at Amazon except a kidney. They stopped allowing that particular purchase years ago. Shipping is free, and now I get annoyed when the package ships in two days instead of same day.

By the way, you know how our grandkids wonder how Baby Boomers can rule the world when we are so dumb? I didn’t hear the end of it from Kaiya when I pronounced Mr. Bezos’ name Bee-zos instead of the correct Bay-zos. Perhaps one of her gifts will go back!