I was talking to my 20-year-old son the other day about how I would like to lose weight and mentioned that if I was paid to lose weight I probably could do it. I confided in him that the people you see on the commercials for weight loss are paid. He wondered if he could be paid to gain weight – he has struggled with gaining weight – he is now proudly 117 pounds. During our conversation I told him that I was making a deal with myself. When I lose 10 pounds I will reward myself with a special purchase. I said that it took me awhile to figure out what that reward should be. I was considering a big screen TV. You could visibly see the excitement growing in his eyes as I spoke. And when I said, “But I decided no – the big screen TV did not speak to me in my heart.” He jumped up and screamed, “What??? Nooooooo!!!!!” and proceeded to tell me how great a big screen TV would be – how Survivor would look so cool, how we could watch family movies together etc. After he sat down, I explained that I was working hard on my painting and that I wanted to make snakes my main focus. I would get books from the library and use them as reference, but got frustrated because I could not keep them. So I decided that my special reward would be to buy my own snake books. You could have heard a pin drop. He looked blankly at me and said, “Snake books. You could get anything and you chose snake books.” “But the snake books speak to me!” I replied. He looked dejected, but then I saw a gleam in his eye – “I could buy myself  a big screen TV. I’m working now – I could save up and buy one myself.” Sure you could, I responded. Of course in the back of my head I was saying to myself, “Just like you were going to save up to buy a car. And now you have $5 left in your pocket.” But I just kept silent and let him have his dream. Who knows – maybe he actually will save enough. In fact maybe I should encourage him. Afterall, he did say that he would allow me to watch it in his room – and he was right –  I bet Survivor would  look pretty cool.

29 Mar This entry was published on March 29, 2013 at 3:07 pm. It’s filed under Uncategorized and tagged big screen tv, books, library, lose weight, money, paint, painted rocks, reward, rock, serpent, snakes, stone, survivor. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.