Making Connections

So I told you about spending my birthday money on a sweater for my mom. (Scroll down if you missed it, it's the next post).

And my brain finally made a connection that I've been searching for since June of 1976.
Took me a long time to get there, huh?

My parents occasionally decided we kids were going to 'earn' an allowance. This happened multiple times, and was always the same story.

It was going to be five dollars every month. For the three months or so they continued to pay the allowance for all the chores we did, they'd come back a day or so later and 'borrow' the money back from us.

Did they then pay us back?

So as you've probably gathered, I did not have an allowance or any way to get small amounts of cash as I was growing up. There weren't jobs for teens in our small town. Apart from the yearly birthday/Christmas money, I was broke all year.

Forget buying clothing, I couldn't even buy a candy bar on my way home from school.

In June of 1976, an acquaintance who'd graduated from high school three or four years earlier asked me to sing at her wedding. I accepted, and learned the song (These Are The Best Times from Walt Disney's Superdad) in a couple sessions with the pianist.

Attended the wedding on June 12th all by myself. 

The only other wedding I'd been to was my aunt Sue Ann's. I was 4 years old at the time and all I remember from that was a straight pin still in the waistband of the yellow satin dress they'd made for me as the flower girl. Damn thing poked me all afternoon and I kept telling my mom and she kept shushing me.

So when I arrived at the church to sing and an usher asked me which side, bride or groom, I had no idea what he was even asking. Funny.

Once he figured out who I was, he seated me in the second row at the end, near the  piano. Sensible.

So I sang my song. (link leads to a YouTube video) 
I still remember all the lyrics. 
The piano score was much nicer than the organ that's in the background on this version, but you get the idea.

After the wedding, the father of the bride was walking around handing envelopes to the pianist, the minister, the guy who had helped park cars. He walked to me and handed me an envelope, too.

I had no idea that I was going to be paid to sing. 
No one had told me.
There was a fifty dollar bill in that envelope.

That was the most money I'd ever held in my hand. 
It was a FORTUNE to me. 
I was stunned.

I was really excited because it meant I could have some new clothes to start school in the fall. If you've ever been a teenage girl, you can probably relate. Heck, if you've ever been a teenager you probably can. 

Later that week, as my mom drove to the grocery store with me, she asked me why I hadn't bought a birthday present for my dad. She told me that I had hurt his feelings when I was being 'selfish' by wanting to spend all the money on myself.

"Very selfish," she said. "I thought you knew better than that."

It was a weird thing, felt like it just came from nowhere. I couldn't figure out why he'd say that, he'd never mentioned us buying him presents before. Why would a parent even expect that?

But after writing the post the other day about spending my birthday money on my mom, I realized that my dad was jealous! He remembered that I'd done that only six months prior, and here I was with FIFTY dollars and it was his birthday and I didn't do anything for him! What an ungrateful brat, huh?

It was only 18 months later that I left home.

I haven't thought about the 'why didn't you spend your money on your father' story in a long time, but it's finally clear to me why that happened in the first place.

Huh.