A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
Jonathan Swift
What We Can Ill Afford
I’ve seen it written many times, “they could ‘ill afford’ to do such and such.” I often ponder just how to deal with times when we feel we can “ill afford” to pay for something. There is always some project demanding a little extra, or toy our child might want from those ubiquitous vending machines. We often ignore frills and nonsense items due to low funds.
It came to my mind once when my husband and I reminisced about the city of Atlanta, and how it looked when we were children. Of all things, one of our shared loves was the Planter’s mascot, Mr. Peanut--a real man, dressed in a peanut outfit, who walked around outside the store, and advertised their goodies. I can still remember bitter cold days, when my Mom and I went downtown to shop. We would spend the day looking for bargains, and after buying the few things we could manage, we would wait for the trolley. Now, it just so happened that the route to the bus stop took us past the Planter’s Nut Shoppe. We would have very little money left, and could “ill afford” to buy any luxury like roasted nuts. But, my mom knew how I loved cashews, and would take thirty or forty cents and buy a few for me to munch on. (She always pretended she was not very hungry, a ploy that young children just don’t catch.) To this day I can recall the smell of the nuts, the oily paper; I can feel the way the bag warmed up my hand. The smells, the tastes, are etched in my memory. This was a special time, enjoyed by people who could “ill afford” the expenditure.
It was the same way when my mother and I bought lemon pie from the little grill up the street from our apartment. I remember one week we literally scraped up fifty cents for a piece of pie that we shared. All our bills were always paid first, so we were okay. But we had very little spending money, for the family of a police officer in the Deep South was not bowled over with the green stuff. At any rate, our fifty cents bought the best piece of lemon pie that I have ever eaten. I can still recall the cold, tart lemon taste. My mother died in 1993, but the memory of this sweet lemon concoction and our act of sharing lingers still.
Maybe once in a while, for some very small indulgences, we should take that extra dollar or so, and get wild and crazy. It just may make a vivid memory for our loved ones that will live forever in their senses and their mind’s eye. Oh sure, later in life we can buy pies and tidbits galore. But nothing ever quite matches the taste of that forbidden fruit enjoyed at a time when we could “ill afford” it.