Thank you Gail for this heartfelt insight into the minds of American parents. The consumerist culture in the USA is exactly as you describe. I agonized over the loss of friends to it, consumed with what their credit card debt could purchase, spending the rest of their time working to pay it off. Buy and work and buy and work. The isolation imposed by the pandemic was a convenient ploy to further distance us from each other, while offering free delivery by disposable temporary workers who will soon be replaced by self-driving trucks. AI will give thousands of claps to garbage pieces written by AI, while our real human productions will be traded almost by word of mouth, suppressed as it is by the algorithms for our slightest deviation from conformity. Almost like this site is becoming, eh?