Dangerous Credit Lines

Yesterday, after church, we took the kids to the pumpkin farm, because some friends of ours invited our family to join theirs for the seasonal outing, and I’m currently accepting all invitations to everything. My dry erase calendar looks like there was a catastrophic marker explosion. From what I can tell, I still have a little time available on the 36^th of November and maybe a lunch opening in mid-December, but that’s about it for 2011.

Back to the story though. . .we went to the pumpkin farm (the name of which I’m withholding because they don’t need any additional advertising) and as we pulled up the overflowing parking lots it was kind of disappointing, signaling we weren’t the only North Carolinians who had that idea yesterday. Judging by the crowd we endured, I’d speculate that a tenth of the population of our state was at this farm.

As we were parking on top of another minivan, my husband tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Sorry,” I said, “I thought everyone would be at the state fair and we’d have the place to ourselves.” The kids were really excited though and already scanning the swarms of people for our friends, so I decided to just smile and to try to make it out of there at the end of the day with all three children and my sanity. (Or whatever the Heather equivalent of sanity is.)

Obstacle number one to keeping my cool was just paying to get in. (Once we got to the front of the line, which took a fortnight.) The prices at this particular pumpkin farm have $kyrocketed since we were last there three years ago. The superpass was $20 a person ($100 for my family) or there was a bare bones admission for $10, which my frugal husband opted for. “But that doesn’t come with pony rides,” Reckless pointed out. At which point we offered the twins the option to add that on if they would clean the toy room when we got home. “I wanna ride the ponies, but not clean up toys,” Stretch countered. “Yeah, well, I wanna beach house and a live in housekeeper, but life’s a compromise.”

As we passed through the gates I turned to the kids and said, “Remember today. When you’re older, I mean. Remember that we did take you places other than school and Target.” They nodded their consent and we went to get in the first of many, many lines. Some of the lamer options, like the hay jump, didn’t have lines. But if you wanted to do the giant mountain slide, you had to pack an overnight bag.

My son decided he wanted to do the “jumping pillow” and I told him that his pass didn’t include that, but he reminded me that he had his own money and could pay for it. He flashed me a wad of cash and I said, “Deal.” But, wait, why do you have more money than me? Lucky for us, he did though, because later, when the girls got to see those ponies up close, they caved and decided it would be worth it to clean up all the toys. (We got them to sign a legal binding document and had it notarized. With that many people, it wasn’t even hard to find a notary and a lawyer.)

We had exhausted our liquid assets getting into the farm, so we had to commandeer some of Brainy’s cash for his sisters. Looking back, I guess we essentially had our son pay our daughters to clean our house. American Dream REALIZED.

I actually thought I still had some cash back in the van, so I figured I’d repay him in the parking lot. Only I was four dollars short. My husband came up with one more Washington and we gave Brainy the five dollars. He was like, “What’s this? You owe me eight.” My husband said, “It’s a down payment. We’re good for the rest and we’ll get it to you soon.” Brainy scowled at us and started assessing interest that very second. He must have some high rates because he was already demanding eighteen before we even made it home. “Do you know how many things we buy for you?” I reminded him. “Wanna make it twenty?” he argued. I shut my mouth.

As we pulled into the driveway, my husband and I discussed if maybe we might be mismanaging our finances to end up indebted to a seven year old who’s gonna stay on us like a loan shark. Maybe. I have an idea for getting rich though. Buy a few acres of farmland, plant some pumpkin seeds, put a bunch of dried corn kernels in a big box for kids to jump in, purchase a few midget horses on their way to the glue factory, and throw around lots of hay bales and then charge people lot$ of money to stand in line all day. We’ll be printin’ money by this time next year. (Though Brainy already said I’ve only got to the end of the week to pay him back or he’s gonna hire the biggest kid in second grade to come and break my kneecaps.)