wages

When Nate was in fourth grade and Eli in second, we hired them to pick up the seemingly hundreds of sticks left in the yard by one of Nebraska’s fall storms. The boys were to be paid by the pound. Dollar signs filled their eyes as fast as the big trash bag filled with sticks. Periodically the boys would weigh the bag to see how things were coming along. I think they hoped sticks would be heavier. I don’t know who came up with the grand scheme, but they decided to increasing their earnings by slipping a five-pound rock in there with the sticks. They brought the bag to me to weigh and pay them their wages. I was very impressed. They were very pleased I was so impressed (and not suspicious). But something didn’t seem right, it’s that annoying quality mothers possess, that same thing that gives them eyes in the back of their heads and that lets them know things they couldn’t possibly know. And I knew something was fishy. I found the stone and my being impressed gave way to being terribly disappointed.

They were paid their wages, but not in money, in punishment. Each boy was to carry that rock to school in his back pack for one day. It seemed an appropriate lesson on the wages of sin and the burden of guilt. Nathan took his punishment like a man and carried the rock the following day. Then it was Eli’s turn. He wasn’t long out the door when he realized, that’s too heavy to carry! So he dragged the backpack all the way to school and dragged it all the way home, wearing a huge hole in the bottom too huge to repair, necessitating the purchase of a brand new back pack. Ah, yes, a lesson for mother: be careful of the punishments you inflict on the children, it may be you that gets the raw end of the deal.