孺子不可教也

Yesterday evening, after picking up my son from school, I prepared dinner for my two punk kids. While I was working in the kitchen, the two was watching something on TV , and the little one asked his sister whether he could switch to his favarite program, Monkey King,.

'Only if you pay me 2 dollars,'  the older one said.

 'If you put everything on for me,'  the little one replied.

'Ok, deal!'

It was kind of surprising to me since the little one had been always “greedy” with his money.

On the way switching channel, the little one noticed a “W”, a weather watch/warning signal, on the screen. He asked me to check for him.

I joked with him,  'are you going to pay me 20 bucks to figure out for you?'

He thought a little bit and said,  'OK.'

I got the 20 dollar bill and checked the weather for him, told him that everything was ok in our area.

About 2 hours later, my wife got home and heard the story.  She asked him, 'are you going to share your money with me?'

'Yes. I only have 3 dollars now. Daddy, can you share your money with me?'

I returned the money back to him, explained, ' you should not give money to people for no good reason. Only give people who needs money, such as a sick kid who needs money for medicine, or a poor kid who has no food, like you did last time.'

He jumped in, ' how about to dead people?'

I did not get it.  'Dead people don’t need money,'  I replied.

'I mean the ghost money, like we did last year in China, we burnt the money for grandpa.'

Sigh, he still had no sense after I had taught him about money for a few months and was confused about fake and real money! 
 
（二００五年六月八日）