Alert Apple #2
Cranberry stain: $25
Lamp shade: $10
Its the all-American thing, right? A nice little book, painstakingly compiled to catalogue the lifetime achievements of a child. You know, Little League pictures, ticket stubs to the recital (the only reason they sell tickets to those is to generate stubs), the mandatory nudie shot during a diaper change at six months.
Yeah. This book was different.
Cat peed on rug: $35
Torn Toughskins: $20
I had my own business at 14, mowing lawns for the cabin weekenders on the lake. For $5 a week, they didn't have to spend a precious Saturday afternoon doing at the cabin what they paid their own kids $10 a week to do at home in the suburbs. Ten of those a week -- cha-ching, $50.
'Course its not like I ever saw any of it.
Bike tire: $30
Bunk bed rail: $18
It's really wierd to have to pay for your own toys. Well, not on the front end, but on the back, after the Christmas presents gets busted, you get charged for the replacement cost, lest Gramma be hurt by the knowledge of how careless you were.
Christmas morning was like a business venture. New assets were potential liabilities.
At six years old, my net worth was negative $54. Its a pretty exact figure, but easy to remember from the book. Income was carefully accounted by the auditing firm of M-O-M, Incorporated. Ten percent for tithing and then the remainder carefully deducted from the never-ending list of costly mishaps and malfeseances that always seemed to gradually grow, no matter how many lawns I mowed or how much cash came in quickly-forgotten cards on birthdays.
For a while, we even had our own household currency. Cheap plastic poker chips carried monetary value for complete chores, though they were quickly traded in to feed the insatiable appetite of the book. At 18, the bills changed, but the process remained the same. Electric, cable, heat, car -- they ate up a paltry biweekly check just like the debt book consumed the poker chips.
They say that debt is the universal experience of adulthood in the modern consumer economy.
I don't think I ever was a child.
Lamp shade: $10
Its the all-American thing, right? A nice little book, painstakingly compiled to catalogue the lifetime achievements of a child. You know, Little League pictures, ticket stubs to the recital (the only reason they sell tickets to those is to generate stubs), the mandatory nudie shot during a diaper change at six months.
Yeah. This book was different.
Cat peed on rug: $35
Torn Toughskins: $20
I had my own business at 14, mowing lawns for the cabin weekenders on the lake. For $5 a week, they didn't have to spend a precious Saturday afternoon doing at the cabin what they paid their own kids $10 a week to do at home in the suburbs. Ten of those a week -- cha-ching, $50.
'Course its not like I ever saw any of it.
Bike tire: $30
Bunk bed rail: $18
It's really wierd to have to pay for your own toys. Well, not on the front end, but on the back, after the Christmas presents gets busted, you get charged for the replacement cost, lest Gramma be hurt by the knowledge of how careless you were.
Christmas morning was like a business venture. New assets were potential liabilities.
At six years old, my net worth was negative $54. Its a pretty exact figure, but easy to remember from the book. Income was carefully accounted by the auditing firm of M-O-M, Incorporated. Ten percent for tithing and then the remainder carefully deducted from the never-ending list of costly mishaps and malfeseances that always seemed to gradually grow, no matter how many lawns I mowed or how much cash came in quickly-forgotten cards on birthdays.
For a while, we even had our own household currency. Cheap plastic poker chips carried monetary value for complete chores, though they were quickly traded in to feed the insatiable appetite of the book. At 18, the bills changed, but the process remained the same. Electric, cable, heat, car -- they ate up a paltry biweekly check just like the debt book consumed the poker chips.
They say that debt is the universal experience of adulthood in the modern consumer economy.
I don't think I ever was a child.
posted by Anonymous at 11:54 AM
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