- December 25, 2024
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When you’re an adult, there’s nothing worse than having no money in your pocket. But when you’re a kid, it’s the opposite: Having unspent money is like torture. You will be haunted until you spend it on something — anything.
We went to the dollar store recently, and Grant, 7, was having a difficult time spending his dollar bill fast enough. I talked him out of a few things, and then he finally went with a fingerprinting set made especially for spies.
As soon as we were out of the store, he tore open the box, but after much persuasion, he agreed to wait until we got home to open the fingerprinting powder. We sat down at the kitchen table and read the instructions and had some fun. Everyone in the family got their thumbs stamped in a small pad, and then I used a towel to carry a drinking glass to the table and set it upside down so we could test his skills. I sent him out of the room so he wouldn’t know who was going to touch the glass, and then I planted a perfect thumbprint right on top. When he was summoned, he raced back in to begin the dusting and the lifting and the analysis.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t prove who the culprit was. Everything looked smudged, from the ink prints to the lifting paper.
The outcome, of course, wasn’t very important. To me, the important thing was that we had been spending some quality time together. Much better than watching TV!
But Grant was not pleased. He sat down with a long face and said, “What a waste of a dollar.”
In his eyes, spending money should yield a clear result, but instead the almighty dollar had betrayed him. And so, we all learned two important lessons in life. First, once you spend your money, you don’t get it back. And, second, there is a reason why you never see spies shopping at the dollar store.
