It finally happened. I knew it would. It was only a matter of when, not if, the chips would fall and the payment would be due. Only I had no idea that the cost would be so high or the consequences of my actions so steep.
Therefore, I guess I’ll just go ahead and ‘fess up. But try not to judge me too badly; sometimes a woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do.
“I want an iPad,” my ten year old told me the other day. I should have known right then by the tone of her voice that I was in big trouble, but we all know that denial does funny things to people.
“Me, too,” chimed in my eight year old.
“What in the world are the two of you going to do with a couple of iPads?” I asked nervously. The little hairs on my arms stood up. Something about their eyes was unsettling. “Face Time the dog? Read Tolstoy? Balance the household budget? Play online poker? I mean, aren’t y’all a little bit too young to interface with the big, bad time suck of the ever changing and often volatile void of cyberspace? Besides, aren’t they like 900 dollars apiece or something?”
A look passed between them that made my stomach churn and my skin go cold. I tried to swallow, but couldn’t.
“Actually,” they pulled out a giant glossy white piece of poster board from behind the couch. “We’ve been meaning to talk to you about all that.”
There it all was, laid out in crayons, scented markers and Littlest Pet Shop stickers. It had finally caught up to me and I had no choice but to pay the price. Talk about needing a debt ceiling. According to the girls’ calculations, I might have one-upped Washington.
As the dollars signs began to blur before me, my life up to that point started to flash before my eyes:
“The first person to find my sunglasses gets five dollars, so get moving, we’re late,” I told the girls as they stood by the front door.
“They’re on top of your head,” one of them pointed out, extending out her little hand.
“Can you break a $20?” I asked.
“No. What am I, a bank?” She replied.
“I’ll get you back later, then.” This is where my trouble began.
The same thing has happened many times with my keys, purse, phone, pen, dog leash, checkbook, wallet, iPod, journal and daybook. The typical exchange:
“Five bucks for whoever can find my (insert any above item here), we’re late.”
“It’s in your hand.”
“All I have is a fifty.”
“I know, I know. You’ll get me back later.”
It is true that the bulk of my debt goes towards lost items but a lot of it goes towards absolute, pure laziness.
“Can you take your sister to the bathroom again?” I ask my oldest, through a mouth full of food.
“Two dollars,” she says back, somehow sensing I haven’t eaten all day and that her younger sibling can’t hold it in her Elmo pull up training pants any longer.
“A dollar,” I barter back.
“Buck fifty.”
“Sold.”
And then there’s this costly one, seeing as it happens every Saturday:
“Ten more minutes,” I mumble, pulling my duvet back up over my head. It’s always a little unnerving to wake up to four little bleary eyes mere inches from the two of mine, staring directly into them.
“But we haven’t eaten breakfast yet,” they cry in unison.
“What time is it anyway,” I ask, sitting up in bed grabbing my phone. “How come I have to drag y’all out of bed in the morning all week long to go to school and make a nutritious breakfast that all you do is stare at, but on Saturday morning you are up at 5:45 am, claiming you might quite possibly be starving to death?”
Silence.
“All right then. Three dollars?” I offer.
“Five.”
“Done. Can you close the door on your way out?”
When I come out of my trance and look into my daughters’ sweet but determined faces and then at their homemade charts and graphs made from glitter and glue and my own doing. It really is like Kenny sang, sometimes “you gotta know how to fold ‘em.”
Two brand new generation 2 iPads should be arriving here via UPS any day now. Good thing we bought that Apple stock not too long ago. The only question now is if they will let me use them. I can’t take my dog with me some places. It sure would be nice to Face Time with him.
Writers Note:
Obviously, this article is completely embellished. No, my girls don’t have iPads, and I don’t pay them to let me sleep in on Saturdays (seeing as I just do that on my own anyway). They’re smart, they’re tall, and they know where the cereal is. But seriously y’all, what mother hasn’t paid her child a buck to take their little brother to the potty so you won’t miss the end of Regis and Kelly? Just sayin’.
Oh, yeah. Here’s an interesting tidbit. My financial whiz friend, George, just told me that, as of the last week of July, Apple now has more available cash than the US Government.
0 comments:
Post a Comment