All I want for Christmas is...paperweights?

You can all keep your Zhu Zhu hamsters. One side effect of homeschooling is that my kids don't even know what the hot toy of the year is, much less think that everybody else has one. Instead, this Christmas my 7- and 5-year-old boys asked Santa for...seven different colors of glass paperweights.

Further proving that weird unique parents produce weird unique children, my kids, who spend a great deal of time playing Sonic the Hedgehog, have been on a quest for some time now to find replicas of the seven "chaos emeralds" that give the characters super powers.

Back in the good old days, you could tell your kids that you've looked in every store and sure enough, nobody sells anything resembling the chaos emeralds, so please choose something else, thankyouverymuch. Nowadays, the kids just search the internet and quickly discover that nearly everything imaginable is being sold by somebody, somewhere.

Sure enough, we found these glass paperweights that look exactly like the chaos emeralds. My sons insisted this was what they absolutely must have this holiday season. The price was within the budget we had set for Christmas presents. So, like an idiot, I bought them. Now they've arrived at the house. They look great, I have to admit. The kids are going to love them.

There's just one problem, and that is the fact that I have purchased for my children some extremely dangerous not-actually-toys that could potentially be lethal weapons. First of all, they are made of solid glass, heavy enough to severely damage someone's head, with a very sharp point to boot. Just a few days ago I smugly made a crack about giving the kids some steak knives to play with, and now here I've bought them something nearly as dangerous.

I have a special talent for imagining the worst possible things that could happen, and here are just a few of the potential end results:

• One of the paperweights falls and breaks, shattering into a gazillion pieces of glass that I must then pick up while the children cry because their toy is gone forever and no one can have super powers with only six chaos emeralds.

• Someone throws a paperweight, breaking a window, the paperweight, or a human head.

• One kid hits another kid while holding a paperweight, knocking them unconscious.

• One kid hits another kid in the face with the sharp end of a paperweight, causing permanent damage and possible loss of teeth, vision or hearing.

• Someone sees the bruises caused by paperweight fighting, assumes we are abusing the children, and reports us to the Division of Family Services.

Obviously I have made a huge mistake here. I guess I didn't quite realize how large and heavy these things were going to be. You might be thinking, gee, Ruth, if it was a lightweight object they probably wouldn't be selling it as a paperweight, huh? Okay, if you're so brilliant, how about a little help here! What am I supposed to do now?

Why couldn't my kids just want a stupid hamster? At least those things are safe.