Finding Joy In Small Emergencies

This time of year the temptation to use plastic instead of cash is
much greater. I have mixed emotions concerning credit cards. For
one thing it just doesn’t feel like I’m spending money when I
charge things, thus making it easier to overspend. Then I get the
bill and lo and behold, they want "real" money in return
for letting me use their card!

My favorite television commercial is about credit cards. This
particular one depicts a young man going off to college and his
parents give him a charge card to use in case of emergencies. When
the young man arrives at college and the party he’s attending runs
out of pizza, he considers that an emergency and orders enough
food to feed an entire dormitory. The moral of the story is that
teens just don’t look at the world the same way adults do.

I was reminded of that recently when my husband and I went to
dinner and a movie and left the older kids in charge of their
younger siblings. We told them we would have the cell phone with
us but they were not to call us unless it was a real emergency. As
we were leaving the theater the cell phone rang. Bill and I looked
at each other. Was someone hurt? Maybe even on the way to the
hospital?

"Hey Mom," son number two said when I answered the
phone. "You know that cake you made? Is it okay if we eat it
tonight or were you going to take it to a dinner or
something?"

When I told Bill what the emergency was, he laughed.

"Well, if he’d eaten the cake and you had been planning to
give it to someone, he would have been in trouble. So he prevented
an emergency."

By the time we arrived home half the cake was gone and the house
looked like a hurricane had hit it, but on a scale of one to 10,
that doesn’t even rank a five.

This holiday season may all your emergencies (and credit card
bills) be small ones.

Happy holidays from our house to yours.