A Bargain for Frances

Xander was pretty upset the other day. He explained that several months ago, he had given some money to a friend to buy a Ruby Red Pokemon gameboy game from him. Then, on the bus this week, that boy borrowed the game, then kept it and won't give it back. (We'll skip the part about me reminding him that gameboys are not allowed on the bus or at school.)

I asked him if he remembered the story A Bargain for Frances by Russel Hoban, and surely enough, Xander was able to remember all of the key details. When Frances goes to play with Thelma, mother cautions her, "Be careful!" And true to form, Thelma swindled Frances out of her dream tea set. Luckily, after some thinking, Frances found a way to trick Thelma into trading tea sets. When Thelma found she'd been tricked, she declared, "I'll have to be careful when I play with you!" and Frances wisely states that "being careful is not as much fun as being friends."

Since a gameboy game is an expensive item, and it DID originally belong to Xander's friend (and I'm not sure how legal the transaction was, way back when), I didn't interfere to get the game back. But I did remind Xander that monetary transactions with kids require lots of caution AND lots of scruples on his part (I think he likes to get a good deal...just like his mom...I just hope it's not at the expense of other kids!)

Guy is just now coming into similar opportunities. He "sold" his friend some small toys for a handful of change and came home to show me his money. The other mom called to see what had happened, and let me know that her 6 year old didn't have any money-value-sense.

So, for both boys, I've recommended that ALL transactions be approved and notarized by an adult. If you're going to learn a hard life lesson about deals gone bad, let's hope it happens when you're young and the deal was only worth $5.