Birthday Slippers

When does a boy become a man? Well, some tag the age of thirteen as such a milestone... and this year was my godson's thirteenth birthday. For the life of me, I have such trouble figuring out what to give him as a gift. He lives over 3,000 miles away, in sunny California, and we rarely, if ever speak... I don't have much connection with him beyond the daily exchange of joke emails between his mother and I.

So... I found a pair of brown, corduroy, "grandpa" slippers, at the local dollar store. How fitting (pardon the pun). My 70+ year old father duly package them for shipping, carefully cutting the styrofoam so that the slippers (lopsided to begin with) would not lose their form. They had styrofoam support on both the inside and the outside of the slippers, and were then placed in a suitably sized box, addressed, and mailed to California. Okay, I inserted a $20 bill, so that Cheapie Auntie Claire could not be accused of being *totally* off the mark. Happy birthday, Cullen!