Allowance

Growing up my older sister S and I had a pretty structured allowance for chores. My dad made a list and it was very detailed on what we earned for each chore. Some of the pay was fair and some was not (even in the early 80s it was not right to pay your daughters 25 cents to mow the lawn). I think for a week we even got paid to read books. He quickly took this off the list when he realized we could bankrupt him before he knew what hit him.

When I was around 7 and S 9, we would be charged quarters for watching 30 minutes of tv. At this same time, the movie Flash Gordon came out. It was the only time in my childhood that we had a movie channel, and this movie may be the reason why we never had it again. My sister and I loved this movie. We scoped out the tv guide and made sure we had our quarters ready every single time it played. I've seen this movie as an adult and it has to be the worst movie ever made. The only thing it had going for it were the costumes. It had bad music, bad acting, bad plot, bad directing, etc. I can only imagine the agony my mom went through every time it played. Parents that hate Barney or Dora or Wonder Pets (my personal irritant) don't realize how good they have it.

I think my parents had a great idea in making us pay for tv time. I think it would be a great idea for video games when the time comes there also, but I'm going to have to figure out a way to mitigate the pain of being subjugated to a particularly annoying show constantly.