It's hardly a secret that I, WoW.com's resident curmudgeon, hate all things that bring joy to others. Well, okay, that's not true, but in general I'm not a big fan of the in-game celebrations and holidays. Much like a Greench, I seem to find no real reason to celebrate Winter's Veil or participate when Love is in the Air or what have you.

But when it comes to dragging a small child around to the most ridiculously dangerous places in Azeroth and Outland? I am there. You want me to take a blood elf orphan to the Dark Portal, then take her to Utgarde Pinnacle and kill King Ymiron in front of her? It's on like Donkey Kong, my friends. I am ridiculously eager to take this kid to visit her little mushroom friends and get her jumped by dragonkin in the Caverns of Time. It's not the pets (although I do enjoy my elekk) so much as this is something I can actually believe a battle-hardened old warrior would actually do. And it amuses me to imagine the smile on the Orphan Matron's face slowly turn to a horrified rictus as Salandria (that's the blood elf tyke in the picture above) relates how I took her to the site of a battle with demons, killed enemy combatants in front of her and dragged her to Silvermoon to stare at musicians.

I bet the musicians are what horrifies her the most. I don't know why, but for some reason I find the idea of my tauren or draenei going, "You want me to take you to a place where time doesn't work, right? Okay. Sounds fine," to be absolutely hilarious and yet totally in character. I mean, these guys routinely fight dragons and old gods and so on; they probably think everyone should get a chance to see a vrykul king die.

So how do you feel about Children's Week?