My granddaughter had a birthday this weekend. She turned eight.

My lovely wife and I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and without hesitation, she said, “I want a Bitzee.”

Neither my wife nor I knew what a Bitzee was. So we asked my granddaughter.

She said it was a toy. And when we asked what it did, she smiled and said, “nothing.”

That’s true. I looked it up and she was correct. It’s an interactive digital toy that comes in what looks like a ring box. And basically all it does is light up and giggle.

How silly. In my day, we had real toys. BB guns, GI Joes, lawn darts. And they all ‘did’ something.

BB guns shot frogs. GI Joes made the world safe for democracy. And lawn darts put holes in the neighborhood kids who were too slow to get out of the way.

Now those were toys!

None of them required batteries or a degree in computer engineering to operate.

We were creative and sophisticated back in my day. A stick became a sword. A rope became a snake.

A rock became..

Well, a rock became a pet rock.

I was in high school when the Pet Rock craze hit. It was my generation’s Bitzee.

So what did a pet rock do? Well, absolutely nothing.

It cost $4 and was just a rock, nestled in a box with some straw. Oh, yeah, it also came with a book that taught you how to care for your rock and teach it tricks.

Tricks? What kind of tricks can you teach a rock?

First, it was real good at ‘staying.’ Much better than our dog. And it did roll over, if you pushed it down a hill.

But that was about as far as I got with the tricks. My pet rock was apparently stupid.

It never leaned to fetch or jump through a flaming hoop. But I will have to admit that he did master playing dead.

I named my pet rock Rockzilla. I figured giving him a fierce name would cause him to come out of his shell and be a little less bashful.

But it didn’t work. Even after being named Rockzilla, my pet rock just sat there. It didn’t stomp on buildings or breathe fire out of his mouth.

He just sat there. Playing dead. Did I mention that Rockzilla was good at playing dead?

The instruction book said that you had to feed your pet rock daily. It didn’t mention exactly what to feed to a rock.

I tried dirt but Rockzilla turned up his nose at that.

I also tried moss. Not even a nibble.

After a while, I started to believe that Rockzilla wasn’t a pet after all. He was just a rock.

I paid $4 for a rock in a box, which is about $1,000 in today’s money.

What a gullible idiot. I promised myself I would never do that again.

Until this week when my granddaughter asked for a Bitzee.

It’s today’s pet rock.

You are supposed to feed it and play with it but there is nothing to feed or play with. It’s just a flickering screen that giggles when you shake it.

I never tried shaking my pet rock. Maybe it would have giggled if I had done that.

But, despite its obvious failure to be what I would consider a real toy, I bought one of those Bitzee things for my granddaughter’s birthday.

Hey, if she wants a pet rock, I’m going to give her a pet rock.

If she had asked for a flame thrower, I would have gone on the dark web and bought her one of those, too. A small one.

My wife says that little girl has me wrapped around her finger. If by that she means that I would do anything for my granddaughter, well she’s right.

If she wants an electronic pet rock, then that is exactly what she is going to get.

Maybe she will better than me at teaching it to fetch.

And if she doesn’t, there’s always lawn darts.