Dinnercraft helps bring your (and our) protracted adolescence to an end. Our authors cover topics ranging from cooking and eating, to home and garden, to crafting and DiY, and all the rest of the things you find yourself caring about these days.
Could I Interest You in a Gently Used Kidney, Sir?
People often ask me if I’m planning on having any more kids, or if I’m going to attempt the clichéd ”try for a boy” because I have two daughters.
The answer? No.
Finis! Kaput! Done!
Not only do I have a patience reservoir about as deep as a thimble, I don’t think I can subsist on less than 4 hours of sleep a night (which is about what I have been averaging for 5 years now.)
Yet, the real reason why I’m not pushing any more little people out of my body, is that between The Old Man and I, we have a finite number of expendable organs we can sell on the black market.
You see, little girls are expensive.
They eat.
They wear clothes.
They play with idiotic plastic toys.
They go to birthday parties.
These are things that we budgeted for. At this very moment, we’re funding: one tuition, two dance classes, one soccer membership, two swimming lessons, two gymnastic lessons PLUS all the gear that they require to do these sports. Because we’re sports people, this was important to us, and we factored this into our budget.
With athletics, academics and religion taken care of, what better to round a girl out than music lessons? Yes! Little girls should play an instrument!
Snort.
Nobody bothered to account for music lessons in the family budget, because neither of us are “music people.” Sure, I played french horn in school. I briefly dabbled in piano and guitar, but I never saw what my mother was paying for these things, and assumed that it was reasonable.
It’s not.
The Big Kid started piano lessons in the beginning of January. The lessons are in 30 minute increments, and run once a week. They also run nearly $20 for the 1/2 hour. Which means the piano teacher makes $40/hour.
Now. I realize that the piano teacher is a skilled person of considerable talent, but really? $40/hour? That’s far more than most people with a Masters Degree are making! Yet, here I am…paying $20 for 30 minutes of my kid pressing two keys down on the piano. Over, and over, and over, and over.
Oy vey.
What if my kid LIKES playing piano? What if she shows talent? What if she actually continues with it on a competitive level? What if my other child wants to play too? And continues on? I’m going to have to live in a cardboard box, on the street corner, under the piano. Clearly families with a large number of musical prodigies have parents who are musical themselves, because nobody with a millionty kids could ever afford to have them taught by someone else.
Because I’m a creative thinker, I’m trying to imagine how I’m going to be able to afford this in the long term. These are the options I see available at this time:
1 – The Old Man and I can sell some organs. Who needs two kidneys anyhow?
2 – Turn our recreation room into a bawdy house, and pimp out my friends and family. Happy endings for everyone!
3 – Teach them “music” myself. Screw theory. Screw reading music. Just go where the “music” takes you!
4 – Quit now, while we’re ahead, and give them each a plastic tambourine from the Dollar Store.
5 – Take on a job as an investment advisor, and embezzle money into the piano teacher’s bank account.
In the interim, I’m going to meditate on the merits of an all icihiban noodle/frozen mixed veggie diet for all of us for the next 15 years.
Pssst, Mister? Wanna buy a kidney?
