We were driving home from Nathan and Ryan’s basketball game yesterday when I asked Nathan what he planned on giving his girlfriend, Shea, for Valentine’s Day.\u00a0 “I bought her a rose,”\u00a0 he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“My math teacher did an equation in class the other day where he proved girls were evil,”\u00a0 said Ryan.<\/p>\n
Ryan often throws out what I think are non sequiturs, but which actually turn out to fit in with the conversation.\u00a0 It just takes a few additional questions to get there.\u00a0\u00a0I wasn’t sure where Ryan was going with this one, however, and I would have been pretty surprised if his math teacher really believed it, so I asked him to explain.<\/p>\n
“Mr. Williams did an equation\u00a0where he said that girls equals time times money.”\u00a0 Okay, I was with him so far.\u00a0 “Then he said that time was equal to money so that makes girls equal to money squared.”\u00a0 Hmmmm…. “Then he said that greed is the root of all evil<\/em>\u00a0so that makes girls equal to the square root of evil.\u00a0 Cancel out the square and square root\u00a0and you end up with girls equal evil.”\u00a0 Double hmmmm.\u00a0 And apart from the\u00a0early reference\u00a0to money, I think this was actually a non sequitur.\u00a0 And I was a little concerned about the impact of his “equation”, especially on girls.\u00a0<\/p>\n “He’s only kidding, mom.”\u00a0 I’m sure he was, but his equation was implying that girls were expensive and things that are expensive are evil.\u00a0 But let’s focus on the expensive part for a moment.<\/p>\n I have to take issue with the perception that girls are expensive; I know plenty of girls who are much more frugal than their male partners.\u00a0 That said,\u00a0I do\u00a0feel that high school is the time when boys are exposed\u00a0to the cost of females.\u00a0 That’s because it’s typically the time when boys and girls start dating and along with that comes expenses.\u00a0 And from listening to the stories Nathan and his friends share about girls and their expectations (i.e. money spent on them),\u00a0girls expect a lot.\u00a0 \u00a0Nathan is finding this out as he had to put out for last week’s Valentine’s dance ticket and dinner.\u00a0\u00a0 I know Nathan, and my guess is that he compares these expenses to a tank of gas.\u00a0 The dance cost him two tanks of gas.<\/p>\n “I’ve decided that instead of going out to dinner and spending lots of money for Valentine’s, I’m going to take Shea to a little pond that Ronnie, Jimmy, and I discovered on one of our bike trails.\u00a0 We can have a little picnic and then I have two movie ticket gift cards so we can go to the movies after that.\u00a0 It won’t cost me a penny,”\u00a0 he said with a pretty wide grin.\u00a0 No, it’ll cost me money since it’s my food he’ll be using.\u00a0 But that’s perfectly fine with me.\u00a0 He’s learning some important lessons.<\/p>\n Then Ryan pipes up again.\u00a0 “My friend is waiting until after Valentine’s to ask one of his friends to be\u00a0his girlfriend.\u00a0 He says he’ll save a lot of money that way.”\u00a0 No\u00a0non sequitur\u00a0here.\u00a0 That message came in loud and clear and made perfect sense…in a frugal, money-saving kind of way.\u00a0 I wonder if his friend is in Mr. William’s class…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We were driving home from Nathan and Ryan’s basketball game yesterday when I asked Nathan what he planned on giving his girlfriend, Shea, for Valentine’s Day.\u00a0 “I bought her a rose,”\u00a0 he said.\u00a0 “My math teacher did an equation in class the other day where he proved girls were evil,”\u00a0 said Ryan. Ryan often throws out what I think are non sequiturs, but which actually turn out to fit in with the conversation.\u00a0 It just takes a few additional questions…<\/p>\n