No, no stereotypes here

Garrett has been invited to a classmate's birthday party tomorrow. Kate asked me to help him find a birthday card (she'd looked around and wasn't finding the kind of selection she'd been hoping for).

We passed a neighborhood bookstore this afternoon, but they close at noon on Saturdays.

So I looked up paper-goods stores, and the ones in the neighborhood also seemed to be closed.

"We'll stop in at the nearby tabák [a shop that sells, cigarettes, newspapers, snacks, etc.]. If they don't have any, we'll ask for where we might find them.

So we went to my "regular" tabák, the one where the proprietor was so jovial about showing me the cigarette pack with the picture of the guy apparently suffering from smoking-related impotence. And he had a selection of cards, some even viable for an almost-13-year-old to give a 13-year-old.


But Garrett was having trouble deciding. The proprietor looked over.

"My wife said it can be hard to find a birthday card."

"Just get them a bottle," he suggested, gesturing over at the wall of liquors of various strengths.

"Well, she's 13."

"So get her a small bottle."

Garrett adds in a quiet voice to me, "She's Russian."

I relay this information to the proprietor.

"So then a large bottle. Maybe the Russian Standard vodka."

Garrett managed to choose a card.