Games parents play

When The Wife was in third grade, her parents gave her a special birthday present. Usually receiving birthday gifts from your parents isn’t all that unusual, but this gift certainly was. A peel-and-stick puzzle of the United States. Each state had a removable capital and a symbol of the main export. Georgia’s capital is Atlanta, and our symbol is peaches.

The Wife played for hours with that board game. Soon, she could beat anyone. It was one sneaky way to get her to learn all of the states. Her story got me thinking back to my past. Just what sneaky things did my parents do to us kids?

First thing that comes to mind is “25 cents a bundle.” One summer, Dad had to re-shingle the roof of his apartment complex. He wanted to save some money, so up on the roof he went. The only problem was getting the 300 bundles of shingles that were still on the ground up to the roof. This is where we four boys came in.

We all thought Dad had lost his mind when he offered to pay a quarter for every bundle of roofing stacked on the ridge of the roof.

Being a healthy teenager, climbing up the 24-foot extension ladder with a 50-pound bundle of shingles on one shoulder sounded easy. And it was – for the first five times. Then our legs started to burn. After another five trips up the ladder, we went on strike and decided on a new pay scale. Dad taught us a valuable lesson that day. If it seems to be too good a deal, it usually is.

We also thought getting paid to cut the grass was a good way to earn 10 dollars. And it would have been if Dad had let us use a power lawn mower. All the other kids on Flamingo Street cut grass using a gas-powered lawn mower or riding mower. Not us. Dad said they were too dangerous. Instead, we cut the grass with a rotary push mower. We thought Dad was just too cheap to buy a gas-powered one, but there were several other reasons.

Cutting our grass took us four boys half the day and wore us out. When we were finished, we were too tired to fight. It was Dad’s way of making sure we got exercise and were so tired we wouldn’t have the energy to get into trouble. On most Saturdays, he only accomplished half his goal.

When I was 6, Dad paid me 10 cents to shine a pair of his Sunday “Go to Meeting” shoes. Every Saturday night at 7, he gave me five pairs of shoes. I’d work for the next hour spreading polish, buffing, reapplying polish and buffing again. Years went by before I found out, my brothers were also shining his shoes. No wonder Dad had the shiniest shoes in church.

Some of his economic lessons did backfire, though. I was 7 when we moved to 110 Flamingo Street. The front yard was void of trees down to the street, but Dad wanted privacy. Above the swamp in the backyard was a fishing lake, and on the far side of that was a forest of pines. Dad paid us a quarter for every pine tree we pulled up from the forest and planted in the front yard.

Years later, Dad had his privacy and a forest of his own. But he also had to pay us to pick up pine cones and rake the pine straw off the grass. It’s a wonder the man has any money left.

Your kids may be too old for the peel-and-stick state game. Your roof may not need to be re-shingled. The front yard could already have all the trees you need. But just about everyone has grass to be cut. It’s not too late to buy that loving teenager in your life a rotary push mower for Christmas. I think you can still buy them at antique stores.

Just think of their expression when they find it under the Christmas tree.