Paying Back Your Parents

Paying Back Your Parents

Alisha has this new job as a waitress at Cracker Barrel. Today someone gave her a twenty-dollar tip on a meal cost of less than twelve dollars. She said she spent much time talking about gas prices with the patrons. Afterwards, the man walked over to her and gave her the twenty. He said, "I hope this will help with your gasoline."

She said thank you and decided then and there she'd better talk about gas prices with everyone who came in. No one else gave her a big tip that day, though.

After church that night, we went to Wal-Mart. I promptly sped to the lunchmeat counter, while Alisha said, "I'll just go off and find something for you to buy me, Dad."

She meant it, too, because when we got in line to check out, she piled her make up stuff to purchase in my stuff. I considered that twenty-dollar tip, and said, "You're making money now. You can pay for that stuff."

"I have to save for college. Or don't you want me to do that?"

I sighed. "Fine."

She glanced around and suddenly said, "There's this ditzy girl in my history class. You know what she told me?"

"What?"

"She's going to pay her parents back for everything they ever did for her."

Quite amazed, I tried to pick her out of the crowd. Could we invite her to become part of our family? I said, "It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me."

"She's nuts, Dad. How do you calculate that? What - you bought me a Hershey bar when I was four years old and I'm going to add that in? 'Let's sure. There's twenty-five cents. And what else did I get that day? Oh, some diapers, because you still hadn't managed to toilet train me by then. That's another six-twenty-two.' Come on."

She stared in the direction of the girl, whom I now saw was rather skinny with purple haiar and a tattoo on her neck. Alisha went on, "Anyway, she isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer because she also told me when she went on her own, she would have twenty-two jobs, live in twenty-two countries, and speak twenty-two languages."

Twenty-two? Why twenty-two? I decided not to ask.

"Really?"
"She's cracked. But anyway, about this paying your parents back thing, isn't that crazy?"

"It can't be done."

"Right. And it destroys the whole thing of parents anyway. I mean, it's not a money relationship. They had you and they wanted you. Why should you pay them back?"

I had to think about it. "It's a nice gesture."

Rolling her eyes, she shook her head. "Really, Dad? How would you do it? And anyway, it defeats the whole thing about parents, as I already said."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, parents want to have you. And they're supposed to take care of you. They can't kick you out of the house or anything because it's against the law." She paused and looked at me suspiciously. "Isn't it?"

"Sort of," I said.

"And anyway," she added perkily. "The whole reason your parents pay for things in your life is because they want you. And they love you. That's it: love. Right? Isn't that right? I mean, I think that's right." She hesitated. "That's right, isn't it? They do it all for love?"

"No, actually it happened because I forgot to use a condom that night."

She stared at me like her head might explode. "Dadddddddd! That's just too too much information!"

"Okay, okay." I had to laugh. I thought that might get her. "Anyway, you're asking me if I love you?"

"Yes, because," she held something out to me. "I found this for you to buy me."

It was a little facial crème dispenser on top of the other things.

"I'm supposed to buy this for you, too?"

"Yes, because I'm your beloved daughter, you wanted me in the first place, and you love me."

"Really?"

"Or maybe if you just happen to have the extra money, I'd be okay with that, too."

"Great."
I paid for her cream dispenser and everything else. We walked out of Wal-Mart full of talk about the crazy ideas some kids have. I wondered where she got the crazy idea that I still pay for everything in her life, even though now she's making nearly two hundred dollars a week. How did I get sucked into that one?

Oh, yeah. Because I wanted her and I can't kick her out, and I happen to forget to use proper birth control now and then.


Not necessarily in that order.


Mark's Comment: I have read many times that it costs something like $120,000 to raise a kid. It always astounds me, but when I think about it, that's a little low. It certainly doesn't include college, car insurance (to say nothing of a car itself), and all the fines you'll probably have to pay for traffic tickets and also repairing the car after she's cracked it up. So, the bill is probably more like, $1,200,000.

Is it worth it? Not when you think about a figure that high. But then when you look into that child's darling eyes, and see their cute smile, and they sincerely tell you, "I'm going to pay you back for everything you ever spent on me," you realize that this could very well be the only way you will ever retire comfortably.

Alisha' s Comment: That girl is definitely squirrelly, don't you think?

My Son, the Hypochondriac

I've known for some time that Gardner, my nine-year old, has entrenched health worries and fears. Whenever he gets sick, it's always "the end" and all that.

Well, to my horror, my wife has been telling him that some of his stomachaches of late might be caused by an ulcer because he drinks too much soda pop. And a friend at school has filled him with horror stories about tapeworms. So I should not have been surprised when one night Gardner staggered into my office with the news that his stomach hurt.

"I don't know what it is," he said. "Do you know what it is?"

"Probably just gas, or something like that."

"But gas comes out. In a burp or a . . . you know. So it couldn't be gas."

"Go lie down. See if you feel better."

He lay down for about six seconds. "Oh, I feel really dizzy. Could a tape worm or ulcer make you dizzy?"

"I don't think so, Gardner. Take some Tums."

He did.

A minute later: "Dad, I saw a light or something flash in the basement."

"So?"

"So it could be someone."

I sighed. Gardner also has a desperate fear of intruders sneaking into our house and whacking all of us, though it's his own little hide that he's most worried about in that arena. "I don't think anyone is down there," I said.

He lay down again. Then: "Dad, I feel so bad. My brain hurts."

"Take some aspirin."

"No, it's not a headache."

"What is it, then?"

I waited. I braced for something really crazy. I wasn't disappointed.

"I think that flash put something into my brain."

"Like what? An alien?" We'd discussed this before. I told him unequivocally there are no aliens. If they wanted to take someone over, I told him it would be the President or someone powerful, maybe Bill Gates or Bono or Gene down at the local McDonalds, but not him. He is clearly unconvinced.

"Maybe a ghost or something."

"Gardner, just lie down and go to sleep."

"I can't. I'm scared. What would it feel like if I had an ulcer?"

So we were back to that now. "They'd have to go in and sew up your stomach and you could only eat bread with warm milk poured over it. No more root beer. No more macaroni and cheese. No more McDonalds Happy Meals."

He stared at me in abject horro. "I couldn't eat any more chicken McNuggets?"

"Definitely not. But that's what happens when you have an ulcer. Plus, you'd probably be spitting up blood. Plus, you would feel much worse than you do right now. Plus, you'd have to go to the hospital and get lots of shots." That always put the fear of doctors into his heart.

He appeared to mull this over. "Shots?"

"Five, ten, twenty of them or so. Long, gleaming needles."

His already very white face went whiter. "But what about a tapeworm?"

How could I calm his worried soul? "If you had a tapeworm, it would crawl up into your mouth and wiggle out of your lips and smile at us."

"Really?"

"I've heard they can do that." Don't ask me where, please. Probably in college. We heard a lot about guys who ate immense quantities of food who obviously had tapeworms back then. I must've known ten or twenty guys who had them(supposedly). In fact, some said I had one, but I knew I didn't because nothing had ever wiggled into my throat and said Hi.

"So maybe I don't have one?" he said.

"Probably not."

He lay down again. Then: "How old do you have to be for them to operate on you to take out a tapeworm, Dad?"

"Thirty-five," I said without hesitation.

"Exactly thirty-five? Or could it be less?"

"No, only more, not less."

He thought about this. "So it wouldn't happen to me for a long time?"

"Nineteen years," I answered, hoping this had settled it.

He sank down again. Then: "I feel really bad, Dad. My stomach feels really bad. I think it's a tapeworm."

I sighed heavily. "For the millionth time, Gardner, you don't have a tapeworm. If you did, you'd be so skinny you'd look like a stick. You'd be so skinny, you'd have to run around in the shower to get wet. You'd be so skinny, your Adam's Apple would stick out like a giant tumor."

Oh, no, there I'd done it. Now he'd be worried about tumors.

"Oh" was all he said, though.

He went silent until suddenlyI heard something. I whipped around. He vomited all over the floor. I could smell it from my perch at the desk. "Run to the bathroom, Gardner!"

He ran - but only after he'd finished depositing everything on the floor.

I reluctantly began cleaning it up. Every feel seconds, I forced back heaves into my throat from the stench, making a noise like, "hoop, hoop." I hate the smell of puke.

Gardner sidled back in. "I feel a lot better, Dad."

"Wonderful." I sopped up the last of it, fighting off the urge to puke myself.

He watched me. Then: "Was there a tape worm in it?"

I should have seen this coming. And then with that illumination that comes to a parent while they're in the middle of some disgusting task like the one I was engaged in, I saw a way to nix this obsession once and for all. "Yes, there was. It lay there all gross and disgusting. I killed it. Squished the head with my shoe."

"Really?"

"It was writhing and going crazy. It obviously wanted to go back to your stomach. So it's a good thing you vomited it up. We'd never have gotten him out otherwise."

"Wow." Gardner's eyes looked like CDs.

"Yeah, I let Zoe eat it," I told him. Zoe is our will-eat-anything-including-cat-poop Labrador retriever.

"But she could get it inside her, too."

"She needs to lose weight anyway." I knew now he'd worry about her, so I said, "But I think the tapeworm was dead, so it won't affect her."

He stood there for awhile. "I guess I'm okay now, huh?"

"Yeah, nothing to worry about anymore. Go to sleep in the peaceful slumber of those whose conscience is clear, their lives clean, and their hearts untroubled."

He stared at me. "What's that mean?"

"I made it up. Go to bed." I trotted off to the kitchen with the last of the vomit pieces.

He went to his room to crawl in bed. I went back to my desk and wrote this. I wonder what's next? Cancer? Alzheimers? An alien abduction with full anal inspection?

Whatever it is, I'll be ready. I'll get Gardner to vomit it up, kill it, and have Zoe eat it. That's my new formula for success in solving this parenting issue.