Dude's Birthday

We celebrated Dude's birthday a few days ago! The kids and our babysitter made a cute little banner that they hung on the garage door. I almost destroyed it when I pulled up and routinely pressed the button above my visor in the car. I caught it in time to stop it and make it go back down.
I rushed in with the food and cake.
"What is this trash doing on the table?" I asked, eyeing some Christmas wrapping paper.
I reached for it when our son answered, "No Mama! That's Daddy's gift!"
How was I to know? I saw Christmas paper and it looked liked it had been balled up. I touched it and realized there was something in it. Instead of clear, scotch tape it was tapped up with masking tape, which barely stuck. I guess they played with it or something.
I looked at our sitter. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, well I'm sorry 'bout that. I wasn't looking at it good," I assured him.
His sister was proud of her gift! "I made Daddy a card from his favorite little princess!"
"You're not a princess. Daddy just says that!" her compassionate little brother threw in.
"Well he will love everyone's gifts!" I said, trying to extinguish the little spat that was about to start.
"Everybody didn't get Daddy a birthday present," our son said, while looking at our sitter.
I smiled. "You don't always have to get someone something tangible, and she (referring to our teenaged sitter) didn't know."
"A tangerine mama?" our daughter asked. Before I could explain tangible our son said,
"You coulda got Daddy some of those chop sticks that y'all have!" he yelled.
I couldn't control my blinking. There have been many times when he and his sister have said things and I'd wished I could have stopped the words from coming out. This was one of those times.
Their babysitter is Asian-American.
Luckily we were able to laugh WITH her.
I pinched him on the sneak.
"Ouch! What was that for?"
I kept smiling.
So a few minutes later Dude came home. We were so busy talking that I didn't notice his lights coming into the driveway so he was in the house when we said, "Surprise!"
He read his card and then I passed him the mysterious gift. What could a six-year-old have given him with no job?
It didn't take much to open it.
I was drinking juice when it was revealed and almost sprayed our daughter.
"Wow! Thank you buddy. We can share this!" Daddy smiled and glared over at me.
It was his (our son's) toy. A Star Wars light saber we got him for Christmas about two years ago. I thought I'd given it to Goodwill. But there it was... scratched up and not working.