Good Manners

Father's Day gifts for your car-driving dad.With graduation and wedding season upon us, many of us are buying gifts. Unfortunately the once standard thank you note is becoming rare. Commentator and free-lance writer, Stephanie Greene, has a modest proposal for a little corrective.(Greene) One often hears new brides and grooms - or graduates - complain that they are just too busy to send thank you notes. That they weren't too busy to spend days mall-crawling in the assembly of their staggering gift registry - well, that goes unsaid.

So. How about a little nudge toward good manners in the form of a microchip embedded in the gift that can only be de-activated at the Post Office when you post your thank-you notes? Otherwise, say a month after the big event, an ear piercing beep emits from the gift - not unlike that of a car alarm.Another month elapses with no thanks given and the gift, like the tape recorder which instructed the heroes in the old Mission Impossible TV show, self destructs in a large puff of smoke. This would be a snap to arrange in a toaster, but even more spectacular in a set of towels.

For larger gifts we might employ a swat team, staffed by repurposed Blackwater ops to repel down the side of the new house or apartment, through a window with a large crash and shower of glass to repossess - say - the wide screen TV, or hotwire the giftee's brand new BMW.Think job creation! Think snappy uniforms - and little gold patches with the logo of the Manners Swat Team. Stateside manufacturing may not be a thing of the past after all.