One time, when I was a kid, my dad took me and my brother and my sister to a Toys 'R' Us. I forget what parameters were set - I'm not really sure there were any at all - but he said we could get "anything we wanted".

My impulsive brother probably grabbed the first thing he saw.

My sister didn't seem to have trouble making a decision, but I have no memory of what she got because we never cared much for the girl toys she had.

Me? Paralysis.

I had no idea what to do, where to start, how much the toy should be, which toy genre I should pursue (action figure? book? board game?), which toy characters I should get.

I'm embarrassed about what I finally decided on even now, more than 25 years later.

And it didn't take long for me to regret my choice that day.

I still have trouble making some decisions...but I have come a long way.

Here's a story about a recent decision I made that I didn't regret.

Remember when I went to Quebec? (I know, how could you forget. Here we are more than a month later and I'm still talking about it.)

Well, a big part of the last day for me was what to bring home to my girls. I made a good decision for myself - I told you about my Nordiques glass - I got my wife something nice, and I got t-shirts for my daughters.

I'm here to tell you that there was only a little stress involved - I popped into a few souvenir stores before I was able to make my final decision. I'd love to tell you I bought immediately, but that's not really the way I operate.

With my girls' t-shirts, though, it didn't take long at all. (I spent more time agonizing over what to get my wife.) I saw a couple of very similar t-shirts for the older girls, and then for my youngest, well, you can just take a look and I think you'll agree that I made the right call:

The shirt's a lot cuter if you can see my daughter's face. But I'm not in the business of slapping my kids' pictures all over public web sites.

No regrets on that purchase.

OK. I know. You don't even care about my daughter's shirt anymore. You're wondering what toy I settled on that day at Toys 'R' Us when I was a kid. It's embarrassing.

OK. Here goes.

It was a He-Man bath set, with some soap and scrubby things. Maybe a bath crayon or two.

Oh man. Such an embarrassing decision. I cringe thinking of it.

Stop laughing at me.