This morning I am still preoccupied by my discovery, while editing The Debt Collector, that the going rate for milk teeth has quadrupled since 1985. I try to interest my children in the discovery, but they are non-plussed. "Did you know that in 1985 when I first wrote this play, a milk tooth went for twenty-five cents," I say to Sword.
"Yeah. So?'
"So this means that a quarter is worth a lot less today than it was back then."
Sword is not impressed. "The bank just gives people more money now, so the things in the store also cost more, so it's all the same." No big deal, she implies.
"But what about all the people who saved their money for twenty-five years and now can't buy anything with it?"
"Nobody does that," she says. "They would die."
"I do."
"No, you don't," she replies.
"I don't?"
"You mean to say that you haven't bought groceries for the past twenty-five years?" she asks, with a knowing tone of voice.
"Well, no... I've bought groceries..."
"So you lied..."
Well, okay, but I am trying to curtail my reliance on store bought groceries. I turn to Bow and ask him: "Well, what do you think about inflation?"
He refuses to answer that question. He invites me to play chase instead.
Here's another thing Bow refuses to do: spend his tooth fairy money. There it sits in his piggy bank, and there it will remain. He won't tell me what to buy with it. I think if it were up to Bow, the price of everything would go down, because there wouldn't be any demand.
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Maybe he just likes the idea of having money.
ReplyDeleteHi, Colleen. He likes to play with money, but if allowed to do so for too long, the money does not survive. It's a great way to cause deflation, but it would be illegal to allow him to proceed along those lines. When asked what he would like to spend it on, he refuses to say.
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