Wait For It

In 1981 I purchased my first home, an 1100-square foot, two-bedroom house with jalousie windows and a wall unit air conditioner. Purchase price: $81,000. The mortgage–principle, interest, taxes, and insurance–came to $803/month. Having earned $780/month as a middle school math teacher the year before, I was concerned about my ability to keep up with the payments. So, in addition to tutoring six days a week, I picked up a few shifts at the book store and sold hotdogs at the Orange Bowl during football season. I also taught on Saturdays at the community college, a three-hour, early morning, marathon remedial math class. It would be difficult to exaggerate either how sweet those students were or how unprepared for college work. I will admit that after the second consecutive hour of pontificating about how to find the area of a rectangle of length eight and width six, I was ready for a cool beverage. So I would walk to a delicatessen downtown and indulge in the only pampering I allowed myself in those splendid economic times: I bought a turkey sandwich and a root beer. It was glorious. Even after all these years.

Of course, my story of youthful hardship hardly qualifies. I was blessed with generous parents, an expensive education, and absurdly good health. I never missed a meal and, had I gotten into any kind of financial kerfuffle, there were any number of folks to whom I could have turned for a short term loan. My point this week is not about political economy nor public policy-topics about which I know nothing. Indeed, Sgt. Schultz knows more about these subjects than I. Nor do I know anything about why any sane institution would front tens of thousands of dollars to a 22-year-old with a credit history composed primarily of empty pizza boxes. I just want to point out how much more appreciative your kids will be if you will stop giving them everything.

Some examples may serve to make the point:

Do you walk into the hall 45 minutes into Beethoven’s ninth symphony, trampling over the feet of seated concert goers? Do you chat loudly with your companions pontificating about how the first three movements of opus 125 are just so boring, that only the chorale is worth listening to?

Do you read the last page of the mystery first then, since you already know ‘whodunit’, do you toss the book aside unread?

Do you always eat dessert first? (And if so, are you apprehensive about health concerns relating to obesity?)

Of course not. Every adult understands the importance of waiting. “Foreplay later” is not a popular long term plan.

Then why are you denying your children the deep and lasting satisfaction of working hard to achieve a long term goal? Why do you keep giving them stuff, stuff that they neither appreciate nor enjoy?

No 16 year-old needs a new car. Not unless she has worked outside the home to earn a percentage of the purchase price. The gift of a new car isn’t a gift; it’s an insult. A new car for a high school kid communicates helplessness on the part of the recipient. That’s why, after receiving a $40,000 Lexus, she pitched a boogie crying about how she wanted the BMW.

What’s wrong with this picture? Everything.

Even water tastes better after you’ve mowed the lawn.

Remember those snarky, obnoxious, fussy kids whining their way through Disney World the last time you were there? You remember the children: they were outraged that they only had seven lollipops when they wanted eight.

Had they paid ten percent of the admission fee, there would have been fewer tears.

Give your children the gift of hard work and accomplishment. Just be prepared for them to still be talking about a turkey sandwich and a root beer 35 years later.