On Money

There are for sale signs and going out of business posters all over the Small Town. It's not like the factory has closed because there isn't a factory here; it's more a tight-wad sensibility made worse by scary news reports that has shuttered up so many shops. It's downright depressing, recession depressing.

And it's sinking in with Bridget, this current financial situation. Maybe not so much sinking in as floating close above her every day thoughts, like randomly hanging there, not so much something to worry about, but something she's (over)heard enough to consider more than once. 

Today she said, There is something I want. I don't need it. It's not something I need. It is definitely something I just want so I am just throwing it out there.

What? I said, half-heartedly, thinking she was thinking a new ski jacket (ch-ching), a new pair of boots (ch-ching), a pony (oh gawd).

A Patriots t-shirt, she said. You know, one that fits me.

I don't know why, but this completely crumbled me. A frickin' t-shirt? Post-football season? When no one really cares so much?  (She is not a trend-setter, I guess, unless she's ahead of some trend and knows something I don't know.) But honestly, I am sure I could score a Patriots t-shirt marked down at Target, so she might as well have been asking for a pair of new socks -- please mama? ones without holes if you can manage it. And a saltine? 

The only time my parents talked to me about money when I was a kid was to tell me that it was impolite to talk about money. My sister once bragged at school that my dad made a penny a minute and even though she was punished for being so impolite, they told that story over and over to their friends and laughed and laughed. I was five and already sucking at math: were they laughing because this was a lot or a little? 

Now, I try to use the words some PTO speaker told me to use -- "we are spending our money on other things" and/or "we are saving our money today" -- so as not to stress them out. I try to remind my kids that I am more than just the distributor of their heart's desires and I remind them that putting a couple bucks in the bucket is just as important as putting in a couple hours of work somewhere for free. I remind them that we will always have what we need but rarely have everything we want.

So dilemma approaches in the form of what is likely a discounted t-shirt at Target. Do I get it for her, because I can, or do I not get it, because she doesn't need it? Do I give her the thing she wants, probably because someone else had one and she needs a little help in that department, and you know, I love her, or do I tell her that it's unnecessary right now and hope she forgets? Do I use this as a bargaining/bribing tool to work more of my wicked ways aka never having to unload the dishwasher ever again?

Maybe I should take her downtown, to one of the few local shops that remain, and tell her I will match the money she chooses to spend from her savings and let her get some other cool t-shirt or some smelly pencils or those weird food-shaped erasers she loves. Because that feels sort of responsible and maybe a little indulgent, I realize, but she did ask nicely. And truth is, I do want to be the distributor of their heart's desires, I do (!), even when I know that is exactly what I shouldn't do, not right now and probably not ever. Still, ugh. What to do?