Chump Change

On Friday night at book club, someone mentioned watching The Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday evening when they were a kid.  This set me off, moaning about how I had recently tried to convey to Sahsez the excitement my sister and I used to feel every Sunday after supper, after having waited all week for our show, and how she hadn't gotten it at all.  "Why did you have to wait for it to come on?  Why didn't your parents just play it for you when you wanted it?" 

A big part of her lack of understanding is that we don't have a TV, so, even though she is going to be eight this year, Sahsez doesn't really know how TV scheduling works yet.  But the other part is that she doesn't have a lot of delayed gratification in her life, and this is something that I am trying to work on. 

That's kind of weird, isn't it?  I mean, I don't think my parents ever had to "work on" teaching me that you sometimes have to wait for good things.  It was built in to my existence as the kid of parents who, while they invested tens of thousands in piano lessons and interminable roadtrips every summer, rarely had much cash left over for new clothes or toys. 

But Sahsez is a rich kid who gets new stuff all the time (blame the grandparents, not me!) and so I consciously try to think of ways to teach her this life skill.  Hmm, life skill?  Not really.  I guess it's more of a character trait, being able to wait for things, having time to think about whether you really want something and understanding that things have a cost associated with them, etc. .

One way I do this is by putting books on hold at the library.  I did it with the whole Series of Unfortunate Events, right up until December 24th when, in an act of pure parental manipulation GENIUS, she finished The Penultimate Peril  (number 12 in the series of 13) just in time dive into her own personal copy of The End (number 13, bien sur), which had been waiting patiently under the Christmas tree for the previous three weeks. (We simply cannot wait to get this one out of the library.  The hold list is three months long!)

Another way that I tried to do it was to encourage her to take the time to roll up all the change in the change bowl so that she could buy herself a toy that she's been desperately wanting.  The toy is called a Mood Beam, and they're not easy to get, unless you're willing to spend 10GBP + 25GBP shipping = 35GBP = $CDN79!!!  Kiss my ass, 25 pounds shipping fee!

Okay, so that was a an extreme case.  Not all the sites charged so much to ship.  But still, having little tiny boxes shipped from the UK is not my idea of money well spent and so I was going to have to see a bit of elbow grease on Sahsez' part before she got one of these useless, but frankly irresistible, little fellows. 

To my surprise, she was pretty uninterested in doing the rolling.  I was aghast.  I mean, it's still free money.  All she had to do was roll it.  In similar circumstances, my sister and I would have rolled until our fingers bled if it meant we were going to get some money of our very own. Sahsez' refusal just made me dig in my heels and even though "Mood Beam!!" was the first item on her Christmas wish list, I didn't order her one. 

This morning, she reopened the Mood Beam discussion, and I responded by making her the same offer I'd made a few months ago: roll the pennies, sell them to the drugstore, then we'll talk.  To my surprise, this time, she was into it.  I helped.  After all, I may be a bitch, but I'm not a heartless bitch. And also, if I do say so myself, I am a wicked good roller.  In less affluent times, I once rolled 30 dollars worth of pennies in order to afford to take another family out for pizza because they had recently taken us out, and I was ashamed to admit that we couldn't afford to reciprocate. 

After a short time, we had rolled all the quarters, dimes and nickels, and run out of penny rolls.  We had $21.55. 

"Well, we'll go get some more penny rolls tomorrow, and maybe if we get to thirty, we can start watching ebay for a Mood Beam in that price range." 

"Yay!  That was really easy!"

"Yeah, it was.  You know, when I told you to do this before, you weren't interested.  You did two rolls, then you said it was too hard and gave up."

"Oh, but I was six then."  (Aside:  This is a frequent excuse for past behaviour.  Sahsez completes disassociates her current self from her six-year-old self.  As if, in her mind, there's absolutely no accounting for anybody six or under.  This is fair enough, I suppose.  I can't account for my behaviour at 19 and it could be argued that the maturity difference between 19 and 29 is roughly equivalent to that between six and seven.)

"No, it was just a couple of months ago."

"Oh.  I guess I didn't know how fast it was going to be." 

Her improved attitude made me take one last look online to see if I couldn't magically find a Mood Beam for the amount that we had now.  I went to a site I've never visited before, except to find out who wrote something, or something like that.  Perhaps you've heard of it?  It's called Amazon.com.  It's a wondrous place, I tell you.  And they had a Mood Beam for 15 bucks, including shipping.  I must now reiterate my earlier statement:  Kiss my ass, 25GBP shipping fee!

And while we were already there, I thought I'd check on how much cheaper I might be able to get a copy of Barbara Kafka's Vegetable Love for, having seen it at Munro's for $50 on Friday.  Dare I say how much cheaper I got it for?  I'm almost ashamed.  And I won't let this stop me patronizing my independent local booksellers, I promise! But people, it was US$5.35.  Plus ten for shipping.  Of course I bought that too.  After a hard day's teaching about delayed gratification and rolling pennies, surely I had earned a little impulse buy of my own?