Toy Scheming Continues

As I wrote in last week's column, my eldest daughter Brianne made a pretty good attempt at deal-making for a new toy. Things didn't work out quite to her satisfaction and she continued to silently scheme. A week later to the day she approached with a handful of change.

"Look what my teacher gave me!"

I looked to Brianne's cupped hand that held a dozen shiny pennies.

"Wow, Brie, your teacher must really like you! Are you teacher's pet?" She smiled and started listing off all the toys she was going to buy.

A little too amused for my own good I had her count the pennies.

"Twelve!"

"Hon, you're going to need a lot more than twelve cents to buy all those toys you want, at least twelve dollars, probably more."

"I'll go look for more money!" Brianne immediately turned on her heel and went running through the house, sifting through kitchen drawers, digging through school bags, pants and coat pockets.

"Hey, why don't you save that money for college?"

Brianne froze in her tracks; nose wrinkled, "No way!" and after much fruitless and rather obnoxiously messy digging under sofa cushions Brianne returned. She was pointing a single finger at me, creepily reminding me of the 1978 version, "The Body Snatchers". (You know, the shocking ending when Veronica Cartwright's character approaches what she believes is Donald Sutherland's surviving character of an alien-invasion, and, well, is quickly proven wrong.)

"Check your purse!"

When the purse proved empty, Brianne decided it was time for a drive to the bank, the place where, to her, money simply pops out of giant calculators with a quick button stroke. When the road trip wasn't forthcoming Brianne went for her last resort, the one that all kids have tucked up their sleeves when the going gets tough with the parent-folk, she decides to hit up her grandparents.

Just then the phone rings, and who else would be calling but my mother offering to take the girls to the store, to buy what else...toys!

"Because," My mother replies, with a noticeable smile in her voice, "You never buy the girls any toys!"

It may have taken a week of scheming, and maybe it was body snatchers or ESP mind control, whatever the case may be that little girl is (frightfully) good.

Originally published in the Daily Advocate, February 2008.

Bethany J. Royer-DeLong is currently entrenched at home fighting the good war against the gimmes and the I-don't-wannas. She blogs recklessly, as all mothers of children under the age of six should, and has been working on that "supposed" great American novel, times a dozen. You can visit her at motherofthemunchkins.blogspot.com and email her at broyerdelong@yahoo.com