etsy

Dear Etsy,

Con­grat­u­la­tions. You’ve done it again, and I don’t mean that in a good way. Your oh-so-cute Gift Guides for Grand­mas and Grand­pas went out of their way (before they were edited to CYA) to per­pet­u­ate your stereo­typ­i­cal view of any­one over, oh, say, 35 as com­pletely out of touch with today’s cul­ture and fit only for retire­ment to a rock­ing chair where they can sit all day and knit and rem­i­nisce about the Good Old Days, that is when they aren’t bak­ing cook­ies. I’d have thought that Vanessa, at least, would have learned from the bruhaha that arose from her arti­cle this sum­mer, but appar­ently not.

Funny, the grand­par­ents *I* know are out there build­ing houses with Habi­tat for Human­ity. They are through-hiking the Appalachian Trail, 2000 gru­el­ing miles, while most of you young­sters on the Etsy staff prob­a­bly wouldn’t even make it as far as Neels Gap. They are fill­ing classes at the John C. Camp­bell Folk School and sim­i­lar insti­tu­tions, expand­ing their minds and stretch­ing their cre­ativ­ity to the limit and beyond. They’re still fleec­ing peo­ple half their age, or younger, at the poker table for that matter.

Per­haps I should send my hus­band, a grand­fa­ther of four (ages six to thir­teen), up to your head­quar­ters to show you what today’s grandpa is really like. I’ll make sure he’s wear­ing his brand new Tae Kwon Do black belt, earned just last Sat­ur­day, and car­ry­ing the two pairs of nunchucks that he’s asked for in pref­er­ence to YOUR gift sug­ges­tions this Christ­mas. He can do a lit­tle kumdo (Korean sword) demon­stra­tion while he’s at it — he’ll have the black belt in that in a month or so as well.

In any case, your narrow-minded view­point has got­ten really old; older, in fact, than you think we boomer-generation old­sters are. It’s time you got over your­self and your attitude.