I Got My 6-Year-Old a Scorpion

How to choose a gift that's probably not on their list. The kind that takes some imagination. [View in Browser]( [Esquire Sunday Reads]( [How to Choose a Gift for a Kid]( How to Choose a Gift for a Kid To understand why I gave Anwyn a scorpion, you have to know about the scroundrels. The scroundrels are a group of strange little creatures that have been a part of her life pretty much forever. They look sort of like unwatered Gremlins and were born in our imagination during a long road trip years ago. Now, whenever we're driving somewhere together, before I've even put the car into gear, Anwyn gives me a two-word imperative from the backseat: "Scroundrel story!" Sometimes I forget where our story left off. She never does. Over time, the two of us have worked out a pretty detailed portrait of the scroundrels. Their likes, their dislikes, their vices, and their virtues. As far as food goes, the scroundrels love to eat scorpions. They sprinkle dried scorpions on their cereal, mash scorpions into their fruit smoothies, fry scorpions up for dinner. Most of all, they love candy-coated scorpions. [Read the Full Story]( [MORE FROM ESQUIRE]( [What It's Like to Take a Psychedelic Trip Without Drugs]( What It's Like to Take a Psychedelic Trip Without Drugs It doesn’t take a third eye to see that, at long last, Americans seem primed to turn on. If you’ve heard yourself utter the phrase “plant medicine” when what you mean is “shrooms,” if you’ve found yourself absently Googling “ayahuasca retreats” the way you used to look for beach getaways, if you’ve got a friend who flew across the country to take a “heroic dose” of psilocybin in the care of a shaman and you felt the sharp prick of jealousy…you are, well, hardly alone. 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