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August 12, 2003

Got Me A Pocket Fulla Change

Giselle thinks about money these days. Last night, a friend of ours, Jon, took us to us all to dinner. The rest of his family was out of town, and it seemed like he was really itching to experience the whole kids-wrassling-around-in-a-restaurant-booth thing--which he got to see plenty of.

We were getting ready to leave, and he was rearranging the cash in his wallet, and he grabbed two one-dollar bills and gave one each to Giselle and Harrison. The boy was just looking at his and flapping it around. But Giselle had this look of concentration on his face. So Jon asked her, "So Zelle, what do you think that's good for?" She didn't say anything, so he rephrased, "What do you think you could get with that?" She finally got done thinking and said, "Well, you know, if I had two dollars..." She didn't get any farther after all the cackling laughter.

I guess she had been doing a lot of thinking about how much her skimpy collection of coins was worth, after an incident last week when the ice cream man paid a visit. I had come home for lunch and Amanda and I were back in the bedroom talking about my Grandma, and about how her Dad is doing, when we hear the bling-bling bling-bling bling-bling bling of the ice cream truck making its attack run. We didn't want to fiddle with crashing through doors looking for money and then chasing the guy down, so we got really quiet. Sure enough, we heard all this commotion on the other side of the house indicating that Giselle had heard the over-amped chimes of delight barreling down the street. We kept quiet and watched the bedroom door, wondering if the jingling would fade away before she found us. But the sound kept getting louder, and so did Giselle. Except she never appeared in the door. Instead we heard all this crashing and rummaging in her bedroom, followed by the sound of her running down the hallway and the ching-ching-ching of her little box of pennies and the kablam of the front door being thrown open. We both jumped up. Amanda ran for her purse and I ran for my daughter. By the time I lofted out the front door, the ice cream man was stopped directly in front of the house and there was Giselle right at the front of the line gabbing away at the confused ice cream guy. I could see Amanda approaching with her wallet as the guy eyed the coins in his hand. I asked how much she gave him and he said "Looks like nineteen cents". To which Giselle replies "So what can I buy with that?" Amanda took over from there, but man, what a hoot.

And thus we figure it's time for an allowance. It shall be meager to start with, but should provide her with options: you know, the whole buy-something-cheap-now or save-for-something-better-later scenario. And since I personally struggle with the 'Instant Gratification Isn't Quick Enough' gene, I know my work is cut out for me.

Posted by Jeremy at August 12, 2003 4:26 PM