Stay-at-Home Day

About once in three weeks Zach has a day where he doesn't have to be at work, nor does he need to attend to a side job. That means he's home with Jacob and me all day and it's a big deal around here. We make big plans for these days, plans which we usually end up tossing out the window because we're so tired from being so busy in all the days before.

Saturday was one of these stay-at-home days. We went to breakfast at the diner because Jacob has been waiting for months for Zach to be able to do this with us. It was a good start to the day, but when we got home we lost all our steam and pretty much lazed about the rest of the day.

When we were leaving the diner, there was this kid about Jacob's ago with a disposable plastic container that had a hole in the top of it. They were in the little room between the two doors which has the game machines in it. His mom, or whoever was supervising him was sitting, in her pajamas, on the bench at the other side of the room. When we went to walk out the door, the kid stood in front of it and shoved the container an arm's length from his body in our direction. We just looked at him and waited for him to say something but he didn't. So Zach said, "What's that for?" and the kid just kept looking at him. So finally the mom told him to say what the money was for. The kid finally answered and he said "Baseball." That's it. Zach reached into his pocket and tossed some change in the container.

I really don't like the practice of planting kids outside the door and having them beg for money for whatever charitable purpose it's the time of year for. I'm really surprised that the diner would allow someone to solicit like that...It's not teaching the kids anything, and really just either makes you feel like a jerk if you don't have any change on you, or makes you angry that you had to fork over some cash for some ambiguous reason. I like being charitable, but not in that way.

The kid didn't have anything official with him, and he didn't even say thank you. I wanted to reach back in the bucket and grab our change back. And then pinch him or something. Brat. When we got out to the car I asked Zach how much he gave the kid. "Four quarters." I wasn't happy to hear that, "You gave him a dollar?! I would have just curled my hand up with a bunch of pennies to make it sound like a lot of money."

Yikes. This isn't what this post was supposed to be about. I guess I'm still angry about that kid. I had other stuff to write about the day but now I can't remember any of it, and Jacob and Zach are both asleep so I can't ask them what the heck it was we did for the rest of the day.