Random Story: Beer Money
This past Christmas, through various relatives, my son managed to accumulate what to a seven-year-old must seem like a vast amount of money. His newfound windfall has gone largely to purchasing various streets and toy s, much to my mother’s merriment. She specifically instructed me that this money was for toys and bullshit. In translation, she didn’t want her money going to anything practical. My son being of like-mind, when asked why he doesn’t buy his own pizza and junk food when we go out to answers, “You’re the grownup. You’re supposed to pay for it.” Fair enough.
The other part of being the parent of a newfound hundredaire is attempting to teach the value and meaning of money. It’s a tall order, especially when dealing with a child who is still more entranced by the shine of a quarter than the crinkle of a $20 bill.
The lesson made me think back to my first real and, in my mind, tragic lesson on the value of money. Before I tell the story, there are a few things you have to keep in mind.
To the best of my recollection, the seventies and early eighties were an extraordinary time. At least it was in my home. I grew up in a time of partying and excess. It didn’t matter what else was happening. There was always time to celebrate something. My parents were even more strange than the times might have dictated. My mother was and is a firm believer in self-expression, say what you feel, and be who you are. My father, in his ruggedness, believed that mistakes and pain were a part of life.
Because of this, I was afforded a certain amount of latitude. For my father, my bumps, bruises, and mistakes were the things he was proud of—even more than my accomplishments.
With my parent’s life philosophies, I am at times amazed that I survived at all. It was just a different time with very different values. Children were seen as more resilient creatures than they are today.
Looking back, you could almost be tricked into believing this was done on purpose. We were given playgrounds made completely of steel and concrete. We drank from hoses during the summer (I’m still unsure why that’s a bad thing). We were put out of the house at dawn and told not to return for at least 10 hours, with the only exception being lunch maybe and severe injury. Oh, and car seats? Please. You were lucky if the seat belt in the family car didn’t sit so high as to run across your throat. But we were loved.
I don’t think I was much older than five or six years old; I had accumulated some money between my birthday and Christmas, which were only about a month apart. I always seem to have more money than any young child should reasonably have. I distinctly remember my mother borrowing money from me and paying me back with interest. I think $10 cost her two. This was either a product of my mother being kind or slightly embarrassed, hitting up a five-year-old for cash. Either way, I was fine with it.
I’m not sure how old I was, probably when I was closer to two or three, I developed the habit of stealing sips of my parents' beer, at some point, that turned into my having my own seven-ounce bottle. We called them nips. There is a picture somewhere in my parents’ photo albums of me in our tiny backyard wearing nothing but a diaper holding a bottle of Budweiser.
Now would be a good time to reference the points I wrote earlier about how I grew up.
One evening, my father was heading to the bodega and asked me if I wanted anything. “Pick me up a six-pack,” I said, straight-faced. My father, just as straight-faced, “Go get your money.”
Looking back. I feel like my father looked at the situation with one of two thought processes, either he was tired of my stealing his beer and appreciated his son stepping his game up, or he was going to the store to buy beer anyway and realized he could simply mooch off of mine. Either way, it was a win for him.
My mother, however, was far less forward-thinking in her response. “Fuck no, you are not buying a five-year-old beer.” I’m guessing this was her response. I was five, and this was 38 years ago. My mother did tell me later that she called my uncle, who told her to let me buy the beer. “It will be a good lesson.” A lesson in what exactly? Who knows. I gave my father $5 and waited for him to return. When he came back, he handed me my pack of nips and 50 cents in change.
I looked at the two quarters, and I was confused. I assume the conversation with my father went something like this.
Me, “Where is the rest of my money?”
Father, “Rest of what money? You gave me five dollars, four dollars, and fifty cents. You get fifty cents to change.”
Me, “But I gave you paper money. I want to paper back.”
Father, ”It doesn’t work like that.”
Me, “The fuck you say to me, old man?”
Okay. That last part didn’t happen. Seeing as how I am alive to write this story, but I was still pissed.
I cried to my mother about how my father cheated me. She also explained how money worked. I wasn’t trying to hear it from her either under normal circumstances, where normal means that it’s okay for five-year-olds to buy six-packs of beer. My father would have given me my $5 back, took the beer away, and explain what a hard-learned lesson was. Nope. None of that even came close to happening. I was out $4 and 50 cents. I’m pretty sure I drank one bottle of the worst American beer known to man and went to bed. This was an experience that would change my life forever. It didn’t make me more responsible with money, not by a long shot. I am terrible with money, but I didn’t drink another beer until I was 23 years old.
For the record. I didn’t pay for it.
