(First published here and here)
“Mom! MOM!” cried the child with unbridled enthusiasm. It was Friday. Did they know yet?
“Mom! Mum! MA!” You’d think Friday came once a year for all the excitement she was injecting in the one syllable.
“Mom-mom-mom-mom-mom-mom!”
He was secretly enjoying the fact that she wasn’t yelling for Dad for once, but decided to put her out of her misery. He put his book down, walked upstairs and let her know that her mother wasn’t home yet.
“Oh.” A brief pause to regroup, then, intent on her goal: “Daddy?”
“Yes?”
“Can I have my ‘llowance?”
“Yes, Sheena.”
What? What was this? No persuading necessary? No proof of chores completed, or discussion of homework to be done before the fun of the weekend began? No promises or bribery involving the most loathsome chore of all, the clearing off of dinner dishes and emptying of the dishwasher? Had she heard him correctly? Unsure, she said nothing for a moment, while he watched the expressions flit over the features in her sweet face. She was a very expressive, vivacious child. He often wondered if she was somehow eating twice as many sweets as he suspected.
“Unless you can think of a reason for me to wait until Mom gets home?” He smiled, eyebrow raised in question. She came to her senses, decided not to question this new turn of things.
“Nope! Allowance time! Time for allowance!” A brief inner struggle, and she continued. “I was good this week, did all my chores all of the days and now it’s time because I made my bed, AND I made Lacey’s TOO, and I didn’t even have to!”
“All right Sheena, here you are.”
Sheena took the five dollar bill, eyes shining, and slowly walked to the couch. She sat down, and considered her options.
Last week, she thought, her allowance had been revoked because she had taken home a note from her teacher saying she lacked discipline. She wasn’t sure what that meant, but her parents had been disappointed so she was sure it was bad.
In her opinion, she hadn’t gotten her allowance because of Bobby Brownnose. No one liked him, she decided. He was constantly telling on his classmates to curry favour with the teachers.
Last Tuesday, he had told on her in French class, it had led to losing her patience and kicking his chair, getting caught and getting reprimanded for using violence. The way Sheena saw it, however, it wasn’t at all fair that she should be punished and not him, since he had started it. During class, they were given an assignment; she had finished her homework before him, he had noticed that she had started playing games in her head, as usual, daydreaming instead of doing what the teacher always asked them to do when the homework was done: reading a book from the shelf. Sheena liked reading, she was like her father that way, but the books in her French class were so boring. She hadn’t done anything wrong at that point, but was harboring angry thoughts about Bobby since since he had raced her to the swings at lunch that day, and pushed her out of the way even though she had gotten there first. She was angry that he had gotten her new yellow dress dirty, and still had gotten to play on the swings, and the swings were what she loved the best. So she kicked his chair, hard. At the time, she hadn’t understood why it was so wrong; it hurt her toes more than the chair. Her parents had explained to her that violence wasn’t how things were solved; you had to use words.
Sheena wondered if five dollars could buy her a swing. She would ask her Mom and Dad if they could bring it from the store to her school and set it down next to the school swings. She imagined it would be silver and shiny and newer than the school swings, and better. She would draw a sign that would say “Sheena’s swing, Bobby Brownnose is NOT ALLOWED.” It would go higher than the school swings, and she would never have to wait her turn. There were so many kids that some days she didn’t even get to swing for any time at all. She would let her little sister ride the swing sometimes, because her little sister liked the swings too, but was too afraid and too little to ask the bigger kids for her turn.
Maybe five dollars could buy TWO swings, thought Sheena as she studied the bill, turning it over in her hands. She didn’t think she had ever seen a playground with less than two swings in it, so maybe they only came in pairs. Either way, she liked the idea of getting a swing so much that she asked her father if he would drive her to the swing store.
***
“The swing store, honey?” Used to his daughter’s unusual requests, he smiled.
“Yes. I want to buy swings to bring to my school with my allowance, Daddy,” she told him, quite seriously.
He paused, debating the best way to explain to his six-year-old daughter that a five-dollar allowance wouldn’t be quite enough to buy her a swing. He wasn’t a proponent of quelling dreams, no matter how wild they were. Still, truth was important, and reality had to be worked into dreams, as he had learned. Straightforward, he decided.
“Sheena, your allowance is $5,” he began. She nodded earnestly, paying close attention. “Now, although $5 holds many possibilities for you, a swing set to bring to your school is not one of them. And… aren’t there swings already in the playground?”
“Um, yes.” She frowned in concentration.
“Maybe your allowance would be better spent elsewhere, then, mm?” He smiled, wondering what she would dream of next.
Sheena climbed on the sofa, adjusted herself and continued to think of what she could do with her increased allowance. Before last week, when it was skipped, she had been getting a two dollar allowance. This jump seemed significant somehow, and she wanted to do something big. She looked up and out the bay window, where the sun was shining and a kid on a bicycle was passing by.
A bicycle! She thought. I could ride a bicycle around the neighborhood! She started thinking of the things she could do if her parents would let her ride all over the neighborhood on a bicycle. She could go to the store alone! She could go visit her best friend, Lou, who lived on the other side of the neighborhood, much more! She could get a basket and put things in it! All sorts of things, like her school books, or her teddy, and ride around with them. It would be great fun! What an exciting prospect, a bicycle was.
Her father, who had been watching her carefully, frowned. If she was thinking of a bicycle, which is what she appeared to be thinking, it would be both good and bad. Good because that is what he and his wife had planned on offering her as a birthday gift in a few weeks and she was obviously going to enjoy it very much, but bad because he’d have to be the wet blanket again so as to keep it a surprise. He wondered when his wife would be home; she usually knew how best to divert Sheena’s attention and imagination such that it was channeled into realizable possibilities that were no less exciting to the child than the seemingly wild ones.
“Daddy?” Sheena was looking at him.
“Yes?”
“Is five dollars enough to get a bicycle?” She was starting to learn that things had a price. In her mind, a $2 allowance was leaps and bounds away from a $5 allowance, but like many adults who skip into the next tax bracket, she didn’t seem to realize that the difference really amounts to the same scale of things, in the end.
“No, honey, it’s not.” He sighed. “How about a book, or maybe a treat?”
“Nah,” she said, undaunted. She was restless, and wanted to move around. It was May and starting to get sunnier; she had to read and do work in school already, she didn’t want to be stuck indoors at home. She decided that her five dollar problem would have to wait a little while until she figured out how best to stretch it. She needed inspiration, she decided as she hopped off the couch, so she would just wait until she got the right kind, and it would be wonderful, she was sure. How could a five dollar allowance be anything but wonderful?
“Can I go outside and play?” she asked, suddenly seized with a brilliant plan.
“Yes, but you know where you’re allowed to go. Stay where I can see you, please. I’ll call you in when it’s time to set the table for supper.”
“OK!” He helped her into her coat. It was like trying to tie the knot at the bottom of a balloon you’ve just blown too full of air; you know it’s going to happen because you’ve done it before, but you don’t quite remember how. Once he was satisfied that she wouldn’t catch a chill, she bounced happily out the back door, hair swinging, smiling with purpose and humming off-key with enthusiasm. Her father shook his head ruefully, wondering what his little minx was brewing in that brain of hers now. He glanced up at the clock on the wall and saw that Ellen would be home any minute with Lacey and started putting something together for dinner; it was his turn to cook, and he’d be able to keep an eye on his daughter from the kitchen window.
