This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
by Dana Gonzalez
My daughter, who is 8, is a consumer after my own heart. She often likes to confirm with me that money “on a card” never goes away. I assure her that of course it doesn’t; the card is just a conduit through which an endless supply of cash flows from one place to Amazon. My son, at a mature 11, has a more evolved understanding of the value of money and knows that it doesn’t grow on trees. It grows on Mommies. But Mommy likes Starbucks and dressing Alexa in the Lulu Lemon line of Virtual Personal Assistant yoga apparel. So, instead of dollars, I hand out tips on how he can earn money. I call it an “allowance” – he calls it “half of what Luke gets.” I call Luke’s mom and tell her to move away.
The tradition of chores for money can be traced back to 1896 when the Sears Catalog added kidware to its pages, thus exposing American boys to ladies’ undergarments, but more importantly, all kids to retail. It was then that the first American child thought to himself “Isaiah? All of your basic needs are met, but with a bit of money you could buy a better stick.”
Not quite as long ago, but still back then, I was in third grade when I realized I wanted new stuff and therefore, it seemed I would need an income. See, I’d told my mom about these new jeans and she’d reached for the well-thumbed Sears catalogue.
Excuse me? Why you goin’ there, woman? Toughskins are not jeans. They are “denim trousers.” They come with “reinforced” seams that give me blisters on my labia. They are made 2 inches shorter than the actual legs of any person wearing them. If you look, the caption in the catalogue reads, “Above-the-ankle cut for that hand-me-down stigma!”
Since anything not available at Sears was a flagrant slap in the face of #1976valueformoney, my mother would not consider it. If I were going to get anything other than practical, water-repelling, reinforced seam, knee-patch-girded, pre-outgrown, apocalypse-bunker fashion found in the Sears catalogue, I was on my own.
Cue chores. My dad invented things so my sister and I could go through the exercise of performing totally superfluous-to-life services to earn money. We polished his shiny shoes, we washed and vacuumed his spotless cars, we skimmed leaves from our pool with a net. Mom went sweat-shop. For her, we ironed, scrubbed, raked, shoveled and harangued Human Resources for a transfer or possibly, asylum.
But we understood, despite our parents’ best efforts to guide us to page 487 of #toughskins&nannypantyporn, we could spend that $8.50 we’d earned at our own discretion. I also knew and accepted that my current “denim trousers” would rise another inch above my ankle before I could afford real jeans.
Kids today have material aspirations that were unimaginable to us then. And they wholeheartedly expect that what they want will come to them right now, with absolutely zero effort on their part.
Thank you, YouTube.
This high-density infestation of idlers, nere-do-wells, hooligans and online con artists have convinced my son – first and foremost – that he wants to be a YouTuber when he grows up. Clearly, sports scores, player stats, Justice League heroism, intellectual and artistic passions of yore are meaningless in the face of views, followers, subscribers and the pennies earned for every witless noob they get to view, like and share their digital buffoonery.
YouTubers around the globe perform feats of excruciating tedium such as stacking Oreo Cookies, sitting in tubs full of Orbeez, and walking or belly flopping on swaths of Legos. I for one, would be the last to argue that cementing a brick wall with Oreo cookie middles is not visionary. Who wouldn’t take 47 minutes out of their day to watch that miracle unfold?
However, time and well, effort, mainly, get in the way of replicating the phenomenon at home. What with all the yawning and scratching that needs to be done by the average member of the viewing audience. But when an alt-revered YouTuber spins – SPINS, people! – a piece of lubed up plastic made in China threaded with ball bearings, that, my friends, is magic worthy of ownership. And my son is not immune to the hoodoo. After all, he is probably apprenticed to one of the sorcerers. He lines up to get his order in. With money from the Mommy Tree.
One possible glitch, is that Money, erm, Mommy might be reluctant to shell out for something her child has just now spied on the hub of shiftless time-wasters known as YouTube. In fact, this scenario has played out in such a way that the boy, in an attempt to gain her support, will follow her around for the whole of a weekend with a laptop or phone cued to the video of the nimble YouTube cretin performing his fingertip parkour from his creepy vlogger lair.
Luckily, having squeezed a person or two out of her vagina, this Mommy is able to overcome both the urge to watch and to be impressed by people she doesn’t know twiddling their fingers on the internet.
Chores are looking better and better, what with Mommy not at all capitulating to the spectacle, and the fact that he, as a non-owner nearly qualifies as a protected species. This brings us to the most degrading task known to the YouTube protegé, which is to abandon watching others living their life (if you can call “Epic Fails With Cats In The Shower” living) and live his own.
“Mommy, I need money. What can I do?!” Reading between the lines: he is hoping he can be paid for hiding socks under the bath mat or recycling air. (It’s farting, actually. But he really does make it look like work.) Being a total businessman – or con artist, depending on whether or not you are his mother – he is all about flexibility in the name of service. That is why, conveniently for Mom, the pay rate for the job is almost always exactly equal to the amount of money he needs. The thought-bubble math looks something like: “Me + fresh toilet paper roll placed on spindle = hoverboard.” He will pull a weed for $3.99 or $399, depending on Amazon pricing. He will even allow you to pay him for the chore in advance of him doing it.
Objectively speaking, I can’t lay all of the blame on YouTube. If we’re honest, who among us did not deliberately cultivate in our children the belief that a fat pasty nursing home escapee squirts out of the chimney every December to lay gifts at their feet? When this ruse was busted wide open, who among us did not undertake to perform the job of the pasty senior citizen and deliver the gifts ourselves? How could these kids not believe they are executive-level youthtefarians who deserve to have whatever they want, yesterday, on credit, with extra bubble wrap.
Yet by now, the accounting remains fuzzy up in my head. Like, the item purchased on my default card and repaid to me with $60 in Amazon gift cards plus 3 months of chores on lay away. This same item is later returned and the short statured businessman wants his cash back? Excuse me, cash? Money laundering from a kid incapable of doing laundry?!
Anyway, the hobby shopping list revolves endlessly and at one point included a bird, probably because the boy happened to have 30 bucks when he spied a pile of drumsticks with wings at PetsMart for $28.
When I was a kid, there was nothing to truly inspire spending aside from TV commercials, which directed us right back to the Sears Catalogue. Because, if it wasn’t there, it was Not.
The most impactful exposure I had to the full retail experience was Price Chopper, our grocery chain. I went with my mom at least once a week to hang out in the only aisle with anything of interest to an 8-10 year old with discretionary income – school supplies.
For weeks one year, I coveted this petite diary with gold leaf pages and a faux vinyl – faux faux – padded cover. It locked. I had no YouTube putz to demonstrate locking and unlocking the little blue volume. This level of gadgetry, however, would completely validate the broodings of a suburban 8-year old shouldering the responsibility of both breadwinner and a Dorothy Hamill haircut. A must-have.
Still, months later it was with great anxiety that I handed over the net profit of six lemonade stands, four car washes and several teeth lost to a serious skinflint of a tooth fairy. You can be sure, once I had that diary, I finished every day with an entry, that began, “Dear Diary.” In fact it was here that I was able to work through my grief over the passing of Iffy and Dicey, our pet hamsters.
Today, my head spins trying to ascertain what is the allure of the latest chunk of garbage, when it is obviously overpriced, and whose star power will have long passed by the time it arrives from China. It most definitely will not do chores. Then, I find out the whole affair is driven by a posse of sketchy, misguided 11-year olds my son calls friends, who earn their living pilfering change from their younger siblings. Each of these half-slackers takes a turn discovering the twaddle of the week and announces that he is getting it. He then states that he is planning to buy the most expensive one available. Tomorrow.
And….here comes my son. He now needs to know what can he do – today – to earn $276. He figures he’s got $13.50 coming to him from nine weeks ago when he helped me carry groceries all the way from the garage to the kitchen, and the profit from the sale of his lava lamp to his younger sister in a few minutes. That’s $80 towards the $276, so could he maybe put in a new sprinkler system or give the house a quick coat of paint? Right now
I’m sure this gaggle of pre-teen mobsters is where my son learned his latest carnie scam of “borrowing” money from his little sister – in the form of a single bill and 700 coins. Every time the 8 pounds of money is held up before me as collateral, along with a selection of his favorite phone chargers, like a seedy subprime mortgage lender, I accept the deal, thinking “I know I’ve seen that pickle jar full of money before.” I make a mental note to haul it off to the bank one day, not because I’m a seedy subprime lender desperate for cash, but because the deal needs to be sealed in order to demonstrate the value of money.
By Thursday, the little business tycoon has defaulted on a loan and Mommy is the dubious owner of The Magic Bean Deluxe Edition (it comes in a faux velvet pouch). According to the slouchy YouTube bedbug named “hiddenvalleyroach” promoting The Bean, it has powers. Maybe so. The Bean is telling me I will soon have the opportunity to wield profound justice.
Recently, my son decided he needs virtual reality goggles. Once again, I’m slammed with the “P”s. Parental. Pragmatism. Practicality. Penny Pinching. And, in my son’s head “Complete Pain in the Ass” not knowing that to a parent this is sublime praise.
But? Virtual Reality Goggles. As far as I can tell, pretty much everything in this boy’s life is virtual. He virtually makes eye contact with other humans, virtually practices hygiene, virtually does what he virtually agrees to do in virtual time.
I get it, though. We had the ViewMaster. It could transport you to a whole ‘nother world, 2.5 inches from your retina – the Flinstones in 3D – the irony. What’s amazing to me is our enduring fascination with experiencing other dimensions. People want to be anywhere but where they are. Of course, it’s understandable why kids would want to escape the daily grit of finding somewhere next to the garbage can to toss their used tissues or their time-sapping battles with velcro shoe straps. Who wouldn’t need a change of scenery, a slower pace?
How to make the goggles go away? My first line of defense with a new item on the bidding block is dissuasion, this time based on the supposition: “If you can buy it at Kohl’s, it’s not edgy.” So not sexy when gramma can get her hands on one. I entreat, “They sell them at KOHL’S,” meaning “The ones you can afford are garbage. Even grandma has one.” As usual, he’s undeterred and wants to wash my car, which is clean at the moment.
Kudos to my dad who never complained, but kids washing cars is, in reality – without the goggles – parents washing their own cars. So – you see a pattern here – I agree, and end up shelling out $10 to my “co-worker” who spends the day hosing down the street, each of his siblings and our cats. Some of the water ends up in and on the car, and it is still, relatively clean.
By now, you’re thinking it, but I am not a total sap. I aspire as a mother to provide the total, comprehensive, first-class, extra leg room, not-sold-in-stores childhood experience. I don’t detail the litany of learning moments surrounding the sporadic fiscal spikes on the national GDP caused by our cycles of material acquisition.
Okay, if you must know, I call them “pep talks” and themes revolve around me having worked for everything I ever had (total whopper), and anecdotes of ballbusting demise experienced by distant cousins who didn’t heed the advice of their mothers (100% fiction). The lessons are frosted and glazed with assurances of my absolute empathy (not) for my son’s predicament and a final flourish where I outline what his life might really be like in an alternate universe, as seen through Mommy-goggles. Living on the dark side, he might have to contend with chores that are done for nothing, internet apocalypse, landline telephones and broadcast television, enrollment in a 4-week Chinese language summer camp and homeschooling until he goes to college.
The Value of Money unit in my Parenting Syllabus was just around the corner when he came to me with, “Mom? How about we make a deal?” At which point any mom knows, nothing that follows will be in her favor. But I heard him out. I found I actually welcomed the chance to inspire duty, commitment, a quest for the job well done, prioritization of deadlines. Or: One. Towel. Hung.
I need this. I just really, really, sadly, pitifully need to outwit him with one stringy lesson learned. He’s 11 and headphones or not, mine is a whine unheard unless there’s a cash transaction involved. I’m also a parent instinctively wired for many things, chief among them, “Embarrass Child in Front of Others, Anywhere. Everywhere. Always,” “Make Every Moment Slightly Better Than Being Skinned Alive” and “Always be Tediously Teaching.” Only the teaching is getting more difficult and taming this child’s quest for the distraction of the minute falls way outside my lesson plan. The Fidget Spinners were one thing. Parent-less trips for fast food on bikes is another. When these rather greater investment ideas come up, I dread the inevitable cycle of thrill, frustration, boredom and loss inherent in the process.
However, we are still shy several more chores and I need to amp up my dream-snatcher routine. How can I disappear the goggles and with them the slew of menial tasks he doesn’t want to do and I don’t want to pay him for? Reviewing in my head, the tale of goggles past, I recall The Ones That Were Flushed, that were lost, broken, “stolen,” driven over, melted, sold, and somehow know that reminding him of his inability to keep a pair of goggles will be about as impactful as “No eating in your room!” while I survey the lobster bibs and lemon rinds that litter his desk.
I do have one more trick. It’s a brand new DEluxe and super hocussy pocussy Bean.
I’m killing two birds with one stone here. Now that I have a Magic Bean and my son has a YouTube-load of vlogging equipment, it seems I have all of the ingredients in place for a lesson and possibly some embarrassment. Well, most of the ingredients. I’ll need a bathrobe, a wet suit, tube socks and gladiator sandals. Some dirt, a disused toilet bowl, and a pan flute for invoking the legendary powers of The Bean. Here before the camera I will make my debut on the pinhead portal, the carnie collective, the slacker capital, YouTube under the stage name Greenback where I will earn views, likes, fans and followers, as I demonstrate how to nurture the growth of The Bean into the much fabled Money Tree.
I’m pretty sure I see light at the end of this tunnel, well it’s more of a Tube.
Bio
Dana is back in Colorado after graduating from CU "about 100 years ago." She and one of her friends from Spanish class reconnected over Facebook and married, bringing Dana and her two children out from Chicago. When she's not at work or busy throwing a woman's touch around the mostly male-infested house she shares with her husband and 6 kids, she's probably driving someone somewhere and most definitely listening to 'tween tunes on 95.7 The Party. In her spare time, she loves to write about the funny side of the scary side of parenting.
Re-printed with permission by the author. The original can be found on her website The Overhead Bin.
