Parker's 10th birthday present

Was a big-ticket item a big mistake?

“A fool is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

After more than 30 years, the details surrounding my favorite childhood gift are fuzzy. But the memory is one I cherish. I’ll never forget the gift.

It was around my 10th birthday, sometime in the early 1990s. I can’t remember the exact year. We still lived in the first of our two homes in Langston, Okla., and in those days we didn’t have much money. But somehow, my mother came up with enough to buy a Nintendo. I couldn’t believe it. Before I ripped all the gift wrapping off the package, I completed an ear-splitting victory lap around the house.

The classic gaming machines sold for about $100 back then, which felt like a fortune, certainly more than I figured my single mother of four could afford to spend on entertainment. In my adolescent mind, your family was rich if you owned a Nintendo.

When my mother delivered one for our home, we became the fun house. Friends started coming over for marathon sessions of “Super Mario Bros.” and “Duck Hunt,” “Tecmo Bowl” and “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!.” Sleepovers turned into ruthlessly competitive all-nighters. There was nothing I wanted more. That Nintendo helped to make my childhood special. It never made me feel we were rich. But it made me feel loved. It made me feel seen and heard by my mother.

I wanted to provide my daughter Parker with that same feeling for her 10th birthday last week. It was important to me to supply her with a similar memory she’ll carry for the rest of her life.

I don’t know if I succeeded.

I couldn’t tell from Parker’s subdued reaction. She didn’t jump up and down. She didn’t take a victory lap. She didn’t run to me and throw her arms around my neck. She didn’t so much as stand from her seated position on the living room floor.

For $700, yeah, I expected more. Maybe that’s my fault.

I saved Parker’s gift for last at the end of a long day. By the time she got to my biggest surprise, she had already opened nearly a dozen presents from loved ones. And Parker is nothing like me when it comes to opening presents.

She’s a slow poke. She treats every gift like there’s an art to tearing paper. This is where her inner-stickler shines. First, she has to remove all the wrapping paper. Then, she must scrutinize each gift, reading its label and perusing the instructions, before moving on to the next one.

Parker has always been this way. When she eats, showers, gets dressed, even when she hunts Easter eggs. She can’t help herself.

Maybe I could have been more creative in my gift of choice for Parker. Maybe she believed I’d do what I told her I would do and forgo gifts from now on in favor of stock purchases for her portfolio.

But for as much of a money nerd as I’ve become, even I knew Parker wouldn’t reflect fondly on receiving a few stock shares for her 10th birthday. I had to do better. At least for this birthday.

So I bought her a 10th generation iPad.

It’s a big-ticket item and, to most of the world, a luxury rather than a necessity. It’s the kind of gift I’ve been teaching Parker to never feel entitled to receive or obligated to give. Given the cost, it’s also the type of purchase I’ve preached to her to be smart about making.

Initially, it was hard to suppress my sticker shock. But I no longer want to be someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

A new iPad has a lot of practicality for Parker. Her old iPad is a hand-me-down her mother gifted me in 2012, when we were still married. I gifted it to Parker last year. She did go stupid-crazy that time. And maybe that partly explains her restrained reaction last week. It’s not her first iPad.

But her old one barely functions. It doesn’t hold a charge. It doesn’t have storage. It doesn’t download new apps. It’s cracked (her doing, not mine). And it constantly signs her out.

“My iPad just neeeever wants to charge because it thinks its so cool,” she told her Grandma Berta during a problematic FaceTime attempt on Dec. 9.

Parker has been a trooper through it all. She made the best of it and never made me feel bad for giving her what I could at the time.

But her tempered response came off almost like she felt guilty for landing an upgrade and letting go of her toxic ex. Trust me, Parker, learn to love and honor your past while embracing and enjoying whatever your tomorrow brings.

Parker also doesn’t have another device to do homework, call family and friends or just surf YouTube. When she FaceTimes her mother or grandmother, she often turns to my phone or laptop after her iPad fails. On meetings with Black Girls Code, she’s using my laptop, which prevents me from doing work.

Now Parker has her own device to learn, play and connect.

I chose the 10.9-inch iPad, pink of course, with 256 gigabytes and Wi-Fi only. It was $509. I could have saved a little money by ordering a version with less storage space. But I didn’t want to cheat Parker to save a few pennies. A pink OtterBox case cost another $72, which sounded expensive to me until I shifted my thinking to its value when Parker drops her iPad. For good measure, I paid another $59 for AppleCare+, more insurance to fight the dreaded bouts of 10-year-old brain.

I used a family member’s 15% employee discount to knock off a little something from the price. With tax, my total came up to $676.31.

I thought it easily would be my best money move of the month.

Instead, after her subdued response, Parker’s 10th birthday present proved to be a more long-term investment. It didn’t give me the return I sought immediately. But in time, I believe it’ll pay.

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