Depression-Era Relatives Decry Waste
At the Becker family Christmas Day get-together, controversy erupted at dessert when too much coffee was made."She made too much coffee, we only needed one cup," Karl, the Becker family patriarch, said. "It was a waste of beans.
"And she buys that expensive Starbucks coffee too," he complained about his daughter, Jennifer.
"The coffee maker doesn't work if you try to make too little," Jennifer said, "so I just made half a pot. Someone else might want some later."
"Did you see the wrapping paper she used?" Josephine, Karl's wife asked. "That fancy shiny paper? And the nice wrapping job she had them do at the store! I wonder how much that cost? We used to wrap gifts ourselves. And we didn't have fancy paper, we used the funnies."
"Why does she have to spend so much money on toys for the kids?" Karl asked. "She's going to spoil them. They won't listen."
"It's our job to spoil them," Josephine added, "they're our grandkids. It is ok for us to give them nice gifts, but parents have to be strict. Besides, we are old, we have lived a long time. Jennifer and David need to save their money."
"They could have patched the knees of those jeans instead of buying new ones," Karl said. "Since when did children need new clothes every year? I didn't have new clothes for school. I went to work in the afternoons."
"They just never shut up," Jennifer told us. "The grew up in the Depression, and won't throw anything away. You should see their basement, it's like they're stockpiling for a nuclear war."
"That food is all good, why throw it out?" Josephine asked. "She doesn't know, we protected her, maybe we spoiled her, I don't know."
posted by Pluto's Dad @ 12/28/2004 09:00:00 AM
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