Friends with a nine-year-old came to stay last week and I resolutely flunked the one question their child asked me. I don’t know about nine-year-olds; I know about two-year-olds, in comparison to which nine looks roughly 18. I’m making excuses for myself, but the fact is that when she asked her question – a good one: “How much money does a writer make?” – I wasn’t thinking about giving an age-appropriate response. I just responded and now I feel terrible.
So, the correct answer to this question, when asked by a child, particularly one who wants to be a writer, is apparently: “You do what you love and don’t think about the money.” What I said was something along the lines of how sensible she was to be thinking about it this early, because although, yes, it is good to do what one loves, one also has to earn a living. The pragmatic thing, I said, is to find someone to pay you to write while you figure out what you’re doing.
I know. Not my finest hour. And very unfair given that, when I was her age, I guess someone must have given me the right answer because until I had mortgage costs, I never did think much about the money.
Her mother looked on with horror before interjecting, “That is terrible advice”, and I came to my senses and answered again. Too late, probably. Even at two, if I put a foot wrong with my own children – last week, a carelessly uttered “shit” when I dropped something – they don’t forget, but repeat it all morning.
Now I have my own question: is it really that terrible, as advice goes? What if she had expressed a desire to be a banker? What then?
Should I have run from the room screaming? What exactly are the rules, so I get it right next time?
Baby steps
My campaign to get Mr Steve, who runs a music class my children attend, to express himself in adult form progressed this week, although not from anything I did. The baby gym has hoops suspended by scarves along the wall and, in the free-play period between bubble time and a jolly round of The Grand Old Duke of York, one of my toddlers put the hoop round her neck and pulled upwards.
There was no danger. The supervision in the class is too intense and, besides, the hoop was too wide to close around her neck. But it would not have been a relaxing visual, say, for the baby gym’s underwriters.
Mr Steve’s voice dropped three octaves to a pitch I had never heard before. “Oh, that’s not good,” he said. I tried to roll the conversation on, to no avail. But it felt like an important breakthrough.
The Starbucks stop here
With Halloween gone, the only big occasion left in the US calendar this year, aside from the election and Thanksgiving, of course, is the war on Christmas, that fun annual event during which atheists, Muslims, gay people and the rest of them conspire to bring down Christianity.
This year, once again, they are sure to be joined by the socialist agents at Starbucks, whose failure last year to issue their Christmas-themed cup in good time caused Donald Trump to issue a terrifying threat: not only to boycott the chain, but to toss it out of Trump Tower.
Or, as he put it: “I have one of the most successful Starbucks, in Trump Tower. Maybe we should boycott Starbucks? I don’t know. Seriously, I don’t care. That’s the end of that lease, but who cares?”
He went on: “If I become president, we’re all going to be saying Merry Christmas again, that I can tell you. That I can tell you.”
As if the stakes in this election couldn’t get any higher.
