Loco Parentis: Hes Gotta Have It
Not his older sister, Marcy. She hates to spend money. She likes to keep it stashed away for an emergency, which never actually arrives, because even if there is an emergency, who knows, a worse one could come along, so better hold onto your dough. Marcy has been an extraordinarily parsimonious child. Even now, in college, she doesn’t cost us much beyond room and board and tuition. She has a work-study job that pays $80 a month, and she makes it last.
Jake operates on a grander scale. We got our first inkling of this when he was still in Cub Scouts. “Dad, what’s insurance?” he asked Doug one day. Doug gave him an impromptu tutorial on people pooling their money together to spread out risk, and the process of making a claim when you get sick or have an accident with your car. Jake digested it all for a moment, then said, “It would be pretty easy to cheat at that.”
When your six-year-old comes up with the concept of insurance fraud all on his own, you’re on your guard. Jake tried the usual lemonade stands and yard sales as he grew up, but he also had more … innovative moneymaking projects. After his school banned candy from its vending machines, he ran a highly lucrative Snickers-and-M&M’s store out of his backpack (until we found out about it). He always foists enough Joe Corbi’s pizza kits on teachers and neighbors during choir fund-raisers to get the free Chee-Zee Bread. We suspect, but can’t prove, that he’s sold test answers. He’s either going to make a million dollars by the time he’s 30 or wind up in jail. He’d be the first in my family if the former, but not the latter, alas.
IT SEEMS TO me there are two kinds of people in life: entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. I was raised by teachers, which means I was raised by people who weren’t particularly sophisticated about money. They had a union to fight for their rights; they had killer pensions; they had summers off. They didn’t live in the real world. Teachers are like hobbits that way.
My family never talked about money. Dinner wasn’t like at, say, the Trump household, where they no doubt go around the table arguing over whether the Fed should cut interest rates. Instead, we told bad jokes and recited poetry. I’ve tried, really tried, to follow along in the current morass of Freddie and Fannie and CDOs and AIG and Lehman Brothers. I know I ought to be able to understand it all. But I can’t.
There have been times when I’ve wished I were savvier about money. But I’m a writer — an artiste. I’m not supposed to care about financial matters. Maybe that’s why Jake’s entrepreneurial spirit seems slightly shameful to me. I could live with it so long as he was merely profiting from overpriced candy bars. But this year, Jake got a job.
