I was talking with a parent the other day when his little boy ran up to him and said, "Daddy give me a dollar." The Father mechanically reached in his pocket, pulled out a dollar and handed it to the child without ever breaking stride in his conversation with me. I wondered how many times a week, or a day that happened. Children today seem to feel entitled to having what they want when they want it. Parents are like ATM's and you don't even need a passcode.
When I was the age of the aforementioned little boy my allowance was a nickel a week. We lived on a farm about 15 miles from town. Every Friday we would all pile in the automobile and go to H.G. Hills to do the weekly grocery shopping. The price of a cold drink was a nickel so each friday Dad would give my brother and me a nickel for a cold drink. That was the only cold drink we had all week. The refrigerator was not stocked with them as is the case in most houses today.
One day my brother and I saw a toy that we wanted. It cost twenty nine cents. We begged Daddy to buy it for us but he flatly refused. Instead he said that if we wanted the toy we could save our allowance for six weeks and then buy it. Think about it, six weeks without a cold drink, or candy, or chips or gum (stuff that kids today have free access to anytime they want it.) It was difficult but we did it. My brother and I each saved our allowance for six weeks. We could hardly wait for Friday to come when we could buy our toy. When we arrived at the store we proudly walked back to the toy department with our thirty cents in hand. I was about to pick up the toy when I missed my brother. In a couple of minutes I found him. He had relented, caved in, yielded to temptation. Instead of buying the toy he had bought thirty pieces of penny candy. It was a huge bag of candy, more than I had ever seen before, even more than Halloween. I looked at the toy; I looked at the bag of candy.......
Oh well, I really didn't want that toy after all.
lcr
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