lessons my son will be spared

I was ten, and I just received a little birthday money from Grandma. I looked at the ten dollars, gleefully thinking about spending it. Candy, candy, candy. My mind wandered to my top drawer, where I kept two cleaned out orange juice cans. Both had been saved especially for a primary activity, where we labeled them with cutesy little cut-outs of cartoon kids holding up letters to spell Tithing and Missionary Fund.

Am I supposed to pay tithing on birthday money? I wondered. I had always paid exactly 10% on allowance (when I got it, which wasn't much), but a birthday present? Hmm. I had also started saving 10% for my future mission, which I was sure I would go on ever since I was confirmed a member of the church at age eight. So that'd be a dollar to tithing, and a dollar to my missionary fund. Leaves me eight dollars. But it's birthday money. I decided to ask my dad for the definitive answer.

"Dad, are you supposed to pay tithing on birthday money?" I asked.

He smiled slightly. "Is it income? Is it increasing the amount of money you have?" I replied.

I didn't bother to answer his question. I knew the answer. Pay 10% tithing on all your income. So I paid, and continued to pay, until I was 25. Even on birthday money.

.......

I was 15 and the youngest sophomore. My 16th birthday didn't come in my sophomore year like it did for all my friends. I wasn't to turn 16--and be of eligible dating age--until my junior year. So as I watched all my friends go out, I got to thinking about this no-dating-until-you-are-16 rule. I thought of a test.

"Dad, let's just say, hypothetically, that on the weekend before my 16th birthday I get asked out. And it wasn't just a normal date we could postpone a week. It was a special event, like a concert of my favorite band, and my potential date already got tickets and everything. Could I go?"

"You ever heard of Amazing Baseball Player With Awesome Batting Average?*"

"No," I replied. The sport in my family was basketball.

"Well, he had a great batting average. One day, a reporter asked him, 'You've got this great average. How do you manage?' Know what he said? He said, 'I never swing outside my strike zone.' So the reporter asked him, 'But if you would swing just outside, just widen your zone a little bit, you'll hit that much more.' But the baseball player said, 'No. If I start swinging a little wider, what's the keep me from swinging a little wider after that? And after that? Pretty soon, I'll be swinging at everything and my average will be shot.'"

"So the answer's no?"


*Sorry, I can't for the life of my remember who the player is. A quick google search didn't do me any good, either.

.....

I was 11, and every few weeks, one of the stupid, immature, goofy, mean, whatever, guys my age (they were all a few months older than me) were getting called up to the pulpit in church. Getting the priesthood, passing the sacrament.

"Why do only boys pass the sacrament?" I asked.

"That's the way God wants it to be."