Question

Dear Mitch, 

TONIGHT is my son's High School graduation, and we did not yet get him a gift.

Aarghh! 

We have very limited funds, any suggestions we could pull off by tonight?

Sincerely, 

Desperate Parent

Forest Hill, New York

Answer

Dear Desperate Parent,

Yes, I do!

Do this: 

Go out right now and buy one copy of many different newspapers and magazines that were published today. (Or, for magazines, perhaps, published this week.)  Ideally, newspapers with today's date on them, even if they aren't printed in languages you ever heard of, will be good.  Then wrap them all together in one big box with a bow around it, and attach a nice label that says:

"On the day you graduated from high school, this is what the world was doing... So go and there and fix what you don't like!"

                              And then: 

"Love, Mom, Dad, the dog, whoever..."

It's a sort of time capsule, but I can assure you that if it is preserved, it will always be something interesting to glance through, particularly as the decades go by!

(You might try to get as many big headlines as possible in there, even sports ones or whatever your son's interests are.) 

Good luck, and congratulations!

Hope this helps,

Mitch