At Rural Ways, we like to think that our family embraces frugality and hard work. But, even under those watch-words, we make the occasional blunder. Yesterday, in an attempt to teach Ellen about the value of money, while also clearing the yard of dandelions, we offered to pay her a 2 cent bounty on every dandelion head she pulled. (Yanking up the head doesn't kill the plant, but it stops it from seeding.) Unfortunately, it was a foolish mistake that had us wondering if we would need a bail-out.
Our picture (as parents) was of a sweaty-faced young girl laboring for an hour or two to earn a few bucks. In reality, she settled in on a soft spot on the lawn and sat there for 20 minutes chucking dandelions into a bucket—no sweating necessary. Pretty soon, she had 500 dandelions. Yikes. We had to call the whole thing off. We agreed to pay her what she had "earned," but instead of having the talk about, ahem, the value of hard work, I ended up trying to explain that making money was not always going to be that easy. She listened seriously for a few minutes, and then said, "OK, Dad. Now Mom is going to drop me off downtown so I can buy a car." Great.
Seems like dandelion picking is much easier, safer and rewarding than bungy cord picking....
ReplyDeleteI concur with Sandy, and Ellen didn't burn any fossil fuels pulling the dandelions. Good thing Ellen doesn't have collective bargaining rights or you would be headed to the Labor Board for a review.
ReplyDeleteActually, it was a stuffed kitty. We hit the downtown shopping district in search of fluff.--Mom
ReplyDeleteI had an experience like this as a kid: after 1000 star thistle at 1 cent each my "employer" reneged. It was a lesson in the importance of proper contracting.
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