Gratitude journal: Pink elephant availability

Tonight I am grateful to the instantaneous purchasing and almost unlimited availability of the Internet.

I’ve been playing a game with my daughter that I call Pink Elephant. As we drive around town, I announcing that I see amazing and impossible things on the side of the road and challenge her to find them as well.

“Look! There are three dolphins having a picnic!”

“Look! A giraffe wearing a tutu!”

“Look! A hippopotamus playing the violin and eating string cheese!”

But the first and most popular of these impossibilities are the multitude of pink elephants that I routinely spot, to which Clara responds, “There are no pink elephants, Daddy!”

So after a recent game of Pink Elephant, I clicked on the Amazon app on my phone, searched on the term “pink elephant”, found one, and ordered it.

It arrived today. When I saw Clara this afternoon, I hid the pink elephant behind my back and announced, “Clara! I saw a pink elephant on the way home from school today!”

“No!” she said, a huge smile on her face. “There are no pink elephants, Daddy!”

“Oh yeah?” I said and then presented the pink elephant to her with a flourish.

She looked stunned for a moment but quickly recovered “That’s not a pink elephant! That’s a baby pink elephant!” Without hesitating, she snatched it from my hands.

Ten minutes later, Clara announced that Baby Elephant and Baby Katie (her favorite doll) are best friends, acting as if Baby Elephant has been living with us all along.

Presenting that pink elephant to Clara was the thing I was looking forward to most today, and the moment did not disappoint. It couldn’t have happened without the rapid availability and accessibility of the Internet.