Labor Day

As a child, I didn't understand Labor Day, except as the last holiday before school started. Remember when school started in September? After Labor Day?

Work didn't have any meaning to me - except for Mum, the adults in my life didn't work. Not until I was much older, in my teens, did I learn that one had to earn the money to buy what one needed or wanted - until then, I just asked for it and someone gave it to me. Don't get your knickers in a twist - I rarely asked for it, because I just didn't care about "stuff".

If you teach your kids nothing about finances, if you shelter them from the reality of bills, of debt, of income and outgo, you are doing them a disservice. I'm not saying your two-year-old needs to know the ins and outs of high finance, but there's nothing wrong with gently explaining that the toy, kid's meal, or trip to Chuck-E-Cheese they want can't happen right now because it's not in the budget.

If I'd known about budget, about saving for the items I wanted instead of using credit, I never would have had to declare bankruptcy way back in the dark ages of my past.

There's nothing wrong with a little delayed gratification.

I've never been able to hold a regular job. Anywhere from the first day to six months in, I used to look around my workplace for ways to kill myself. I figured that's not really healthy, so I moved on from job to job until I gave it up entirely. Luckily, my family has understood my preference for not offing myself with a deep-fryer, glass cutter, razor blade, pneumatic stapler, pizza cutter, or and other otherwise useful and generally harmless tool of one trade or another. I'm blessed, and I know it - plenty of people have no choice but to work shit jobs just to struggle to keep their family in Ramen.

Now I'm a wee more grown up (well, older at least), and I am still a little hazy on this whole Labor Day thing - what's it all about? Does anyone else find it a little ironic that our nation celebrates labor by not working??

Oh, well...happy Labor Day anyway.