My kids are collecting cards. It started when I (stupidly) took them to the supermarket. After my load had travelled down the conveyor belt the check out operator asked them a simple question. “Are you kiddies collecting the latest cards?” Then she used the “F” word.
FREE.
It has universal potency and they wanted them and they wanted them now. Thus it began. The collecting. The mania. The swapping. The fighting. The cards scattered all over my house. The insistence that I go to the supermarket every day to get more so that they could score the grey-headed Flying-Fox.
“Mum…please……everybody else at school has that one and I haven’t – I hate my life…pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssse Mum.”
Perhaps I figured I’d be one step closer to being crowned Barnado’s Mother Of the Year, or maybe it’s because I’d do almost anything to extinguish the low whingey drone of my children, but over the coming weeks I was a regular feature in the 15 items or less lane.
“Hi….back again Amanda” exclaimed Joan, a friendly Woolworths staffer. We were now on a first name basis.
“Oh yes….I forgot the tomato paste – silly me,” I said handing over the dosh then waiting anxiously like I’d imagine Shapelle did for the Boogie Board. My heart racing. My fingers crossed that this would be the lucky bundle and Foxy-Loxy would soon join our collection.
But there was a snag in my stunt. When Joan handed back the change, this time round I got nothing more than the receipt and a customer service smile. I swallowed hard.
“Um….do you have any of those…um…cards…you see I’m well actually not me…the kids, you know I have four of them, cute…blonde…blue eyes……well they are collecting them and um…we really need the grey-headed Flying-Fox and I just thought that….um….”
I had reached a new parenting low. My self-esteem was at rock bottom. I was grovelling at the supermarket.
“Sorry darl but you need to spend over $20 to get the cards.”
I suddenly remembered that I needed 24 rolls of toilet paper, a new mop and bucket and five bottles of shampoo.
Repeatedly I tried to talk the kids out of this fad. In the style of advertising guru Todd Sampson I explained that the cards were a marketing ploy designed to get Australian families to buy more groceries and to secure brand loyalty in the fierce battle between the big two chains in an ever increasing competitive world where the consumer dollar was stretched and shelf space was at a premium…
Whatever Mum. They mounted a counter argument and said it taught them to trade, to barter, to place value on things. All good qualities so I let it continue.
Just when I was at the point where I was considering storing my excess groceries in my roof space, like sex with my husband, it finished as quickly as it started. What a relief (on both counts).
They no longer cared about Aussie animals.
Because Woolworths released the DreamWorks Heroes Action Card so now Shrek had them shrieking and the crusade for the Croods drove me crazy.
Hard to believe but the situation worsened again shortly thereafter when the AFL released their much-anticipated FOOTY CARDS. But this time things were different – this time they came at a price, a $2.99 per pack price.
Remembering that…… “we are learning to trade, barter and place a value on things” I created a new family currency.
1 card = eating dinner every night without telling me “its boring”.
2 cards = doing their homework without me begging them or lying to me by suggesting the teacher said watching TV was their homework
3 cards = Eating breakfast, making beds, putting on uniforms, brushing teeth and being ready for school each morning on time without making Mummy yell or sob quietly in the bathroom remembering how great her life used to be before she had to live through this tedium every day…
“Oh Mum….it’s not fair…we don’t like these new rules,” they bellowed.
Sorry kids. Suck it up. Things can change real quick around here. It’s what you get when you live in a house of cards.
This article originally appeared in an issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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