I started rubbing my hands together. Scheming. Thinking about all the tasks and jobs and things I hate to do.
My wife — I can’t even remember why —said to my daughter one day: “It’s time you had some real chores. You need to come up with a few ideas.”
I popped up out of nowhere, complete with a puff of smoke. “I’ve got some ideas!” I said.
I think my daughter hadn’t finished something or tried to order room service after the kitchen had closed. Something that kids are known to do to set parents off, and get them threatened with more tasks around the house.
It was music to my ears. Free labor! Handing off tasks I hate. Giving up household duties that threaten life and limb — MY life and most of MY limbs!
When I was growing up, chores usually involved something dangerous, grueling and oftentimes carcinogenic. It might be climbing up onto the steepest part of the roof to clean leaves from a gutter, trimming high branches in the oak trees or chasing off rabid raccoons from the grape vine arbor. My mother didn’t believe in simple stuff like taking out the garbage.
Household chores taught us responsibility and dedication, and that you never try to change the oil on a 1979 Ford Thunderbird when the engine is still hot!
This — well, maybe not the hot oil part — was exactly the point of an article I saw the other day headlined, “The perfect chores for a child.” It talked about how assigning jobs to kids will help give them a work ethic and challenge them.
That’s nice, but the truth is work ethic and challenge are low on my priority list. Higher up? A helper for my more dangerous and blunderheaded tasks. Like the other day when I climbed into the grapefruit trees with a pole saw to trim some branches brushing against the house. The grapefruit trees have gotten wise to me. They know to avoid pruning they need to go higher, out of the reach of my saw. They know I don’t like to climb, and that my ladder only reaches so far.
My wife helps me by holding the ladder and saying things like, “That’s it! DON’T go up any further! The ladder is literally bending like spaghetti!”
But with a child helper, she could crawl up on my shoulders while I’m atop the ladder, giving me say another 3 feet at least of reach. That’s a chore, right? (Maybe not legal, but a chore.)
So, I’m all about this. Just not for making beds and doing dishes like the article suggests. I have a gulley full of leaves that need clearing, and come to think of it, I don’t think the oil in the car has been changed in a little over 10 years. About time the kid learns how to duck out of the way of burning-hot motor oil.