Thank You Laptop!

In this past Parsha we are all familiar with the famous maamar Chazal that the reason that Aharon performed the first three Makot is because Moshe could not hit the land or water that had saved him in the past.  The curious notion of a requirement of hakarat hatov to inanimate objects has probably launched a thousand sermons.  The most common, and I think most correct message is that we don't thank people because they need it, but because we, the beneficiary of the favor need to express it - an important point to keep in mind when we daven.

Maybe the reason why there is such an extreme emphasis on this midah in the context is because in reality, the person (or institution) that he really owed hakarat hatov to was Paroh and the Egyptian royal family who raised him.  For obvious reasons, he could not give them the appreciation that they would normally have merited.  Therefore, to protect Moshe from being affected or learning the wrong lesson from this experience, Hashem had him go to the other extreme, expressing his thanks even to the and and Nile to maintain the מידה even in the face of his lack of expressed appreciation to the home of his childhood and the heir to his step-grandfather who welcomed him into his palace.

My very wise wife points out that the Paroh - Moshe familial and then political relationship is one that is surprisingly under-explored in traditional Torah commentaries.  I then noted that that same relationship is probably overblown in the Hollywood production of the Ten Commandments (I'm pretty sure that there is no source for Moshe dating Paroh's queen).