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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Some Hard Bargaining... and Roti Prata

10 Rounds of Jogging
Little Boy jogs reasonably well... at least well enough to have been picked for Track & Field.  But thanks to my maternal carelessness and laziness, he hates jogging, and so he turned up his nose at Track & Field. Sigh! He announced today that the class had to jog 3.2 km at PE today... and that he did better than the Track & Field boys in his class. He was pleased about that.

I took the opportunity of his pleasedness to gain his commitment for jogging at least twice a week at home. I proposed 12 rounds in our neighbourhood and he counter-proposed 10. So 10 rounds, it was. I was not pleased. I hadn't expected my gong-gong son to bargain. You know... he has always been such an obedient one... and if not, I've pretty much been able to outwit him somewhat.

Not this time! This time, he was neither obedient nor naive. Sigh! I should have seen it coming. He is an adolescent and so I should have started bargaining at 15 rounds. Dang!


$2 and $3
When I pressed the issue rather grumpily, Little Boy said (looking quite pleased with himself), "Let's change the topic huh, Mom. Let's talk about something nice. I earned $2 today cleaning my friend's locker with tissue paper. Tomorrow, I'm gonna fix his combination lock for $3."

I was a little taken aback... "Wow! Your friend must own a gold mine!"

Little Boy replied... "I dunno about that gold mine but he wanted to pay me 50 cents to clean his locker. I negotiated upwards to $2/=. If he meets my price, I'll fix his stuff. Hopefully, I'll get my own gold mine sometime."

I was even more taken aback! That's like negotiating upwards by 400%. Gee... who does that? And then I kicked myself. My boy drives a hard bargain. I should have begun my jogging negotiations at 25 rounds!! I must be losing my touch because I asked why he didn't help his friend in need. Little Boy replied, "Help him? Why?! He charged me 50 cents of interest a day when I borrowed $1 from him last week!! I'm never gonna borrow money from anyone again!!"

Now, THAT is not a bad lesson to learn eh?


About Roti Prata
The roti prata stall has the longest queue in the canteen. Ya gotta queue so long that ya sometimes have no time to eat your prata and ya gotta get a friend to eat it for you. That's not much fun really. After all, you've queued ages for your roti prata right? And you don't even get to enjoy it.

Little Boy and his friends decided to collaborate. One boy queues for everyone's roti prata. One boy queues for everyone's drinks. Two boys are in charge of miscellaneous purchases from the less popular stalls. One boy rotates from queue to queue so that the other boys get to go to the toilet in turn.

So, today, the boys ate their fill of everything they wanted, with time to spare to play.


Uber Cute
Ohhhhh... I can't get over how CUTE these little 12 year olds are. At every age I've thought Little Boy cute. He was cute when he was pre-verbal and trying to get me to understand him. He was cute when he was trying to feed himself. He was cute when he submitted his CCA form to the Suggestion Box in lieu of the CCA Box. I can't believe I'm still finding him cute now... when all he's doing is learning to organise people and collaborate. I'll probably think he is cute on the day gets married... holds his first kid in his arms...

Oh... so CUTE!


7 comments:

Celine said...

Whatever their age, mommies will always find their children cute...

Blur Ting said...

He's smart and cute! You'll never have to worry about him or for him. He's really street smart!

Merle said...

Nice to have you blogging about your family again. Would love to see a photo of Milo's bald patch

Petunia Lee said...

Celine - Yeah... I guess so.

Petunia Lee said...

Ting - I need to smarten myself a bit now!!

Petunia Lee said...

Ting - I need to smarten myself a bit now!!

Petunia Lee said...

Comments - Errrr... too late. I have been keeping my fingers to myself and his patch grew back.