Money Problems.

It is midday and the kids are off school and getting settled for their afternoon nap. I have gone into the next room, leaving them playing with their rucksacks, as they’re in a rucksack mood. I go back once to help my son with something and notice that my daughter's asleep. As I leave, my son is busy filling up his rucksack with all the junk that normally lives in the drawers of his bedside table. Fine. Whatever gets him through the nap. But then, after another five minutes or so, I hear the unmistakeable sound of money rattling around as a piggy bank gets banged repeatedly, rhythmically against the bedroom floor. I don’t bother to go in this time, just shout from the next room, telling him to get back to bed. The noise continues unabated so I go in, a little angrier now. I find my son squatting on the floor with the rucksack, now full, on his shoulders. ‘Get into bed,’ I say, really not messing around by this point. ‘I can’t,’ he wails mournfully. And then I realise what the sound is: every time he tries to get up, he bumps back down again, dragged inexorably earthwards by the weight of his rucksack, which is really far too big for him and which now contains – at the bottom, beneath a multitude of books, toy cars and action figures  – his piggy bank. I help him into bed and soon after he falls asleep.