Imagine this: You’re working at a popular toy store over Christmas break. Toys are all over the place. There’s a steady rush of cranky parents toting along their cranky kids in search of that “one gift.” You greet them as pleasantly as possible. Four out of five ask if you have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. You sadly reply, “No. Sorry, not today.”

A barrage of similar confrontations plague you for the next few hours and the natives get hostile. They stare at you like you’re Scrooge and ask violently “Is this a toy store or what?”

“No. Sorry, not today.”

You’re about to close up, when a lady comes in with her four-year-old daughter and asks, “Do you have the P.J. Sparkles doll?” And you say, (big surprise) “No. Sorry, not today.”

You watch as the innocent looking girl begins to cry you a river and in a split second, she races off. Screaming at the top of her lungs and tipping over displays, she is determined to stay until she gets her doll.

Here’s the clincher. Her mother doesn’t do a thing. She simply turns to you and says, “If you get them in your next shipment, I’ll give you $50 if you pick one up for me.”

At this point a million devious ideas float through your mind. Let’s see…your little sister might have one, but not for long. You could drive to the North Pole, pick up one for $20 and still pocket 30 bucks of this lady’s hard-earned green.

But you know it just as much as she does that this doll is nowhere to be found. So you sadly reply, “No. Sorry, not today.”

The astonishing aspect of this scenario is not the fact that this store can’t keep a popular toy on its shelves for more than one hour, but that this lady wanted to pay a stanger more than double the price of that doll for her precious she-devil.

Some say the yuppies aren’t having children—but there’s living proof. The “1980’s me-generation” has spawned an even more (if possible) me-oriented generation and it’s in the form of their little kids right now.

Take a good look at the little Kaitlins and Lances out there. You can’t miss them. They wear $60 designer jeans which they will grow out of in about eight months and they have enough video game cartridges to open their own rental store. At age nine, the girls wear make-up and the boys can color-coordinate outfits.

It’s getting a little out of hand. The parents have spoiled themselves so much that they in turn treat their kids the same way. These kids are getting too much, too soon; going through it too quickly, and eventually end up just wanting more.

Take for example E.T.‘s little sweetheart Drew Barrymore. She had the money and popularity, but she felt she needed more… and went out and got it. This 15-year-old recovering alcohol and cocaine abuser hit the covers of magazines when her attempted suicide became headline news.

Something needs to change and we can’t justifiably blame the kids at this point. They’re too young to know any better, but it’s about time their parents learned.