Summer job

His hair was a masterpiece. Its thick black peaks spiked unevenly in all directions. It was a little too perfect to be the result of bedhead, but his face still had the swelling of sleep.

“We have any breakfast sammiches?” he asked nonchalantly as if I hadn’t asked him several times over the course of the week if there was anything he’d like special from the grocery store, wherein his answer took the form of a series of shrugs.

He needed to have a good breakfast.

We told him he had to work this summer. 

We just couldn’t abide another seven sweaty weeks spent holed up in his room playing video games when he wasn’t sleeping.

The only evidence of him is a pile of dishes materializing overnight in the kitchen sink.

It didn't take much convincing. Even he knew the fresh air would do him good. And the money wouldn’t hurt.

He had already earned his driver’s permit and a mandate to practice navigating the local roadways for at least 50 hours under our careful and fully braced tutelage before he could apply for the coveted junior license.

So there was that. If he wanted our help to get to the magic number, he’d have to have some skin in the game, too.

So he got himself a camp counseling job. And in addition to minimum wage, he is bringing home a seemingly endless supply of colorful stories and rubber-band friendship bracelets he makes on the daily.

His day is made by the adoration of a handful of half-pints and a director-paid round of soft drinks on a sweltering day.

And while we were glad he was enjoying his work, his father wasn’t sure the money wouldn’t hurt.

But we don’t necessarily agree on how he should manage his money.

I try to keep a hands-off approach, aside from an occasional thumb on the scale.

The husband wants to lay down some family banking rules geared toward solid returns: Half, he believes, should go into savings while the other half should probably also go into savings because what else are you going to do with it? “I don’t want you to blow it on virtual outfits that dress up your game players.”

It was a suggestion the boy did not take well.

He had planned to use the bulk of the proceeds of his camp counseling gig to buy himself a new gaming computer that he would build from parts. 

And then all eyes were on me: The arbiter of what fiscal responsibility is owed to the joys of life. 

“I'll talk to him,” I promise. The boy will sometimes do for me what he would dig in heels for his dad. 

And when I do have the talk, I find that I do more listening.

I like to think it’s the hearing that makes the difference. It doesn’t take long to understand that my son doesn’t have a clear understanding of how banking works. Even something as simple as how to cash his new paycheck or that he can keep as much or as little of the cash as he wishes. The simple mechanics of filling out a deposit slip is enough to allow the chore to slip his mind as the paychecks pile up.