Late Fees...

Agent Daddy is an only child. Hard to believe that happens in Catholic families but it does and he is proof there of. That makes the Tech Monkey and Airborne   the only Grand Children for my Mother in Law. My Mother in Law ( a widow) lives around the corner from us.

The other day I witnessed her paying the Tech Monkey. I say paying instead of giving money to because she was asking "How much?" Agent Daddy
comes from a culture where giving money to grand children is a common occurrence so normally this would not have phased me but when I heard her ask "How much?", I needed to step in and get some facts.  I didn't want the boys getting in the habit of asking for money and I wanted them to accept graciously whatever was given. I also wanted to make sure that the Tech Monkey wasn't turning into his Grandmothers bookie....Look if you knew him you would not think that was so outrageous.

What I found out was that the Tech Monkey had been charging his little brother late fees for games that I had paid for, but had not been returned to the Tech Monkey "on time". I explained to the Tech Monkey that he was not allowed to charge his brother to  rent games or borrow games, and that charging LATE fees would cease immediately. He explained that his brother often losses games he borrows and therefore had been put on "probation" about borrowing games and had to pay the late fees because he "lost" the borrowed game. And how much was he charging for late fees you might ask? Five dollars a day. Airborne was down twenty bucks when I discovered this little extortion racket.

I wanted my sons to have the entrepreneurial spirit not the racketeering and extortion spirit.