Tug of War

“Did you guys move my car?” the General says,” because we parked in a really good spot, and it wasn’t there.”

“Move your car?” Charlie says.  “What do you mean, ‘move your car?’”

Jordan, the General’s friend, stands next to the General with a look of unbelief on her face.  Does her friend really live with parents who re-park their daughter’s car when she’s out to breakfast at Denney’s?

“We were parked right in front.  When we went out, it was across the parking lot.  We looked at each other and said, ‘Are we that blonde?’”

The General notices I’m starting to laugh.

“I can’t believe you guys would do that.”

“We were going to move it to the parking lot next door,” I say as if that made any difference.

She stomps up to her room, making frustrated-type noises, ready to devise her next scheme to separate us from our money.  This is what we do on weekends: play credit-card tug-of-war with the General.

“Watch,” Charlie says.  “It won’t be an hour before she’ll think up a justification for why she should separate us from our money.  Do you see her M.O?”

“I don’t know what M.O. stands for,” I said.  “I was always too embarrassed to ask.”

“Method of Operation.  She’ll plan to do something, which she plans to do anyway.  Then she’ll say, ‘since I’m doing this, I should get this.’

“The first this has nothing to do with us.  If she can make it sound benevolent, she thinks she should get rewarded with the second this.  Yesterday she said, ‘Since I’m planning a surprise sweet 16^th birthday kidnapping for my friend, I should get money to pay for everything.’

“That doesn’t work, so she tries the direct approach next.  ‘Mom,’ she says, ‘I need the credit card to pay for balloons and money so we can kidnap my friend and take her out to breakfast before school.’”

“If I say no,” I say, “she gets mad and threatens to go to her Dad’s.  I’ll say, ‘That’s a good idea,’ which gets her more frustrated, which gets her back into her room, devising another scheme.

Sure enough, with ten minutes to spare, she’s refining her M.O.

“Mom, I need money.”

Like I’m not going to ask why.  “Why?”

“I need binders for school.”

“You just got binders.”

She doesn’t deny she just bought binders last weekend.  Instead, she finds a way to explain why she needs more binders.  After a fairly convincing line of reasoning, I’m not convinced.

“Fine,” she says.  “Thanks for ruining my life.  I have to meet Meagan and I’m not coming back because you guys are mean.”

She comes back within another hour.

“Nice to see you,” I say.  “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

She makes frustrating noises and heads to her room.

“Oh look,” Charlie says.  “She didn’t leave us after all.”

She gives him a smart-ass look. 

“You need to do some work, Missy.”

Nothing.

“No work-ee, no drive-ee.”

“You’ll have to drive me and I know that won’t happen, so give up now.”

“I don’t mind driving you,” I said.  “I haven’t been driving for a while.”

“That’d be fine,” Charlie says.  “We can do that.”

More frustrating noises as she shuts the door.  The cycle begins again.

A little help? [] 2:31:48 PM