When our daughter was little, we had neighbors with a daughter about the same age, and sometimes the girls would play. Our daughter had been really good all the way around, getting straight A’s in school, being kind, never asking for anything significant, etc., so that year we decided to splurge and get her an American Girl doll for her birthday. If you don’t know, those were dolls that were stupidly expensive and were all the rage in the early 2000s. We weren’t wealthy but it felt like she deserved the splurge and we knew she’d take care of it and have it forever like all her toys (she’s 26 and still has it in great shape).

She loved it and everything was great until the neighbor came over the next day, absolutely livid. He wanted to know why the hell we had to get our daughter an American Girl doll. I was just totally confused, trying to understand what the issue was. He angrily said, “Now we have to buy our daughter one, and we just can’t afford it!” I didn’t know what to say. Were we supposed to ask them what they could afford and only buy our daughter those things?

They bought their daughter two of them so she’d have more than ours did. Ours was really happy that her friend got two of them, and it didn’t even seem to occur to her to want a second one - she liked the one she got.

People are weird.