Framing context: a couple of weeks ago, the Dragoness picked up a new toy for our daughter…a toy cash register. It’s a pretty neat little setup actually: it came with a few groceries and a pressure-sensitive scanner deck that beeps when you it something on it, and the register itself is also a calculator. It also came with a toy bank card, and there’s a little slot on the register that plays a beeping melody when you swipe the bank card through it.

So…this morning, as I’m leaving for work, the Dragoness asks me to leave my debit card with her, just in case she decides to take in — and take our daughter to — some of the festivities happening in downtown Edmonton today.

Just after I do so, the Dragonlet — who is, mind you, 21 months old — runs up and starts pointing at my wallet, saying:

“Yeah? Yeah?”

That’s her way of asking for things, you see; she wants a card from daddy’s wallet too, because Mommy got one. So I give her one of my points/membership cards from one of the national department store chains. Dragonlet takes the card, grins, and makes a bee-line for her toy cash register. I arrive in the living room a minute later, to find her merrily swiping the card, laughing at the beeps.

I…worry I’m sending the wrong message here.