Webkinz

Earlier this week, my daughter found five dollars under a sofa seat cushion.

"That's actually my money," I told her, holding out my hand.

She stuffed the bill in her pocket. "Finders keepers, losers weepers," she said.

I counted to ten very slowly. "Whatever," I said, pretending not to care. "Just do something productive with it."

Later that night, I found my daughter sitting on my husband's lap at the computer. They had just ordered a stuffed animal off of eBay.

"Here's your five dollars back," Camber chirped as she handed me the five dollar bill.


Yesterday morning, Mr. Quacker arrived in the mail. After two hours of begging, it became apparent that it would impossible to move forward in life until the stuffed animal had a birth certificate and was properly registered on the Webkinz website.

The process of registering a stuffed animal on the site in question is relatively straightforward once the site finally loads; a cartoon duck named Ms. Birdy asks your child to choose a name for his/her pet and type the name into a box.

An unfortunate typo resulted in Mr. Quacker's conversion to the Religious Society of Friends.

To make Mr. Quacker/Quaker's adoption official, all that was required by the registrant and his/her parental helper was the creation of a user name and password...and the plugging in of a secret code unique to each creature.

I wanted to poke my eyeballs out long before the website informed me that Mr. Quaker's secret code was invalid.

"The code doesn't work," I told my daughter. She took the news that she owned a fake Webkinz very hard.

"This isn't real?" she asked, holding up the stuffed duck in stunned disbelief. "It looks real!"

When the time is right, I will bequeath her my Jimmy Chew shoes. Until then, I will feign horror at the existence of counterfeit stuffed animals.