Rod Walton: Depriving kids of Bieber tickets a lesson in economics, responsibility
BY ROD WALTON World Staff Writer
Sunday, January 06, 2013
1/06/13 at 4:57 AM
So this Justin Bieber character is coming back to town.
Perhaps I've just woke up to the real world, but suddenly I'm aware that the teen idol is returning to the BOK Center for the first time in more than two years. He'll be singing "Boyfriend" and those other songs of his, I'm sure. Whatever.
Why should we care, dear reader? Well, maybe it's important to me precisely because my daughters aren't going this time around, having tried everything from trickery and pleading to get tickets for Bieber-mania.
And this just proves the power of negative thinking. Or maybe it's a lesson in economics and the danger of entitlement thinking. Either way, they got Bieber tickets as presents two years ago, and this time around they couldn't afford them.
I actually have fond memories of my uber-Bieber efforts in the summer of 2010. The girls had few hopes of going, but a friend of mine informed me of last-minute ticket offerings. I made back-and-forth trips under a hot sun to the BOK and got what turned out to be fantastic tickets.
My girls came downtown early and treated Daddy like a real hero because he slayed the dragon of Bieber deprivation.
The Walton Trio still glows in conversation about that concert to this day, and I'm certain they wanted to experience an encore.
I shut that door pretty fast. I'll buy your tickets online, Daddy informed the currently unemployed young ladies, if you pay up front in cash. I gave them plenty of lead-time, but nothing happened for me so nothing happened for them.
What's the lesson here, other than Daddy is mean? Well, the long-term hope is that they will equate jobs with money to do things. College is expensive for the parents, young people, so you better make disposable cash the old-fashioned way - you earn it.
"If you want your children to keep their feet on the ground," Abigail Van Buren is quoted as saying, "put some responsibility on their shoulders." I didn't exactly grow up on a farm, but we had a five-acre place with lots to mow and a barn to keep and a pool to clean. My children have none of that, but there are dishes to clean and floors to sweep and grades to keep. It's not exactly pulling themselves up by the bootstraps, but there is some work involved. You've got to step it up a little.
Now those steps are not choreographed like a Bieber show, nor sound so pleasing to the ears (a matter of opinion). What I hope is that the lack of something will sometimes inspire them to work harder, save better and even feel more empathy for those who have even less.
Original Print Headline: Depriving kids of Bieber a lesson in economics, responsibility
