Money, Part 2

I was sitting in the family room when my oldest daughter comes sprinting through the front door, breathless with the news, “Dad, Dad! ---- just stole twenty dollars from Mom’s wallet and he’s outside buying ice cream from the ice cream man!”

Twenty dollars? My four-year-old son? A lot of money for the little guy—like robbing a bank before ever shoplifting a candy bar.

From the porch I see the damage has already been done: there he is, standing on the curb, ice cream in one hand, a fistful of change in the other. 

Only something isn’t quite right.

I expect my son to run and hide, to eat the goods he paid for with the stolen cash in secret before coming out to take his punishment, whatever that might be.

But he isn’t running away. He’s walking right to me, and with a huge smile on his face—like he just won a lottery, if he knew what a lottery was.  

And I’m thinking, this kid’s got a lot of nerve. Steals our money, buys an ice cream, then eats it in front of me. Or maybe he’s got some kind of cognitive disorder, can’t differentiate between right and wrong, no sense of morality or justice or guilt—innocent, in way, but a potential mass-murdering Ghangis Khan in another. How to find a good therapist?

In a moment he’s to me, still smiling, the biggest smile: “Look how much money that man just gave me!” he says, “Look how much money!”

Two fives and eight ones—eighteen dollars of change, a rather fat wad that he stuffs into my hand. “Look!” he says again, hoping, I can tell, for something like approval, for someone to celebrate with. “Look how much money he just gave me!”

What to say to this four-year-old boy with the math skills of a St. Bernard. So many bills in exchange for the single, solitary twenty he’d started out with—a thief, yes, but a joyful thief, one wanting to share, to provide a return.   

Who am I to have to break it to him.