Talking Fiscal Responsibility with Teenagers

 

This morning I had a somewhat frustrating meeting. Another person and I are trying to help save a third person's job, but this third person is not doing themselves any favors by not doing what their boss asks. It's not like their boss is asking them to do something illegal or immoral, they just think everything their boss asks them to do is stupid and pointless, so they don't do it, and now they're being disciplined. I really don't know what to do about this. I mean, who hasn't had a boss ask them to do something stupid and pointless? That's just life. You can always ask why you are being asked to do something stupid and pointless, without phrasing it that way, of course, but you still have to do it. I'm just mystified that this person doesn't understand something so basic about life.

Over the lunch hour I went to a Just Bach concert, where our local harpsichordist played selections from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Now I'm a simple creature who plays the mandolin, and so I only want to play in four keys (G, D, C, and A if you really insist) and their relative minors, so a tuning system where those keys sound great and some (looking at you, F# minor) are completely unusable seems just fine to me. But well-tempered tuning is kind of brilliant in that all the keys are usable, but they all sound a little different, so each one has its own color. As I was leaving, I said to the host (my OTHER choir director's replacement) how good it is to hear something not in equal temperament, and another guy told me, "I tuned my piano at home like that." My response? "Wow, that's so cool!"

But the big thing I had to do tonight was give a presentation on fiscal responsibility to the teenagers where Travalon works. I was kind of scared - who loves public speaking? - but I felt prepared, with handouts discussing spending, debt, savings, and scams. Right when I got there, Travalon introduced me to the little kids he works with, and one said, "Your wife is so beautiful!" Aww! I felt a little intimidated to meet the teens: there were about seven of them, and they were all boys, so we didn't have age, race, or gender in common. But they actually listened to me, and one really connected and asked lots of good questions. I could tell I had gotten him thinking about his spending habits. Afterwards it occurred to me that this combined two sides of me I hadn't expected: the side outraged by injustice (like loan sharks preying on poor people who don't understand money), and the maternal side of me, because I felt motherly toward these boys as I explained how money works. Maybe they kind of picked up on how I was trying to save them from "The Man." Hey, if one kid remembers this talk before signing up for a loan with 60% interest, then it was a complete success.

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