Blame It on My Big City Upbringing

So as it turns out, the reason the stepkiddo had to be remeasured was because one of the other mom’s has offered to buy all the dresses for the choir. She has two stipulations – one is that she measures them all and the other is that she pick the dress.

And I have to tell you, while I recognize the generosity of the offer and I can see why the chorus teacher agreed to it, I’m a bit perturbed by it. It just doesn’t seem right to me that someone gets to come in and throw money at a situation they want to control. I mean, in this case it’s because the mom wants a more conservative dress and that dress was more expensive (and I don’t even know how she knew what it would be, we weren’t in the loop at all on it), but what if we didn’t want that and decided just to throw more money at it. Who would win then? And does this mean that whenever she doesn’t agree with what’s going on she’s going to offer to pay for something? Or that she’s going to demand things be her way just because she paid for the dresses.

I’m probably not being fair. I’m sure it’s just a kind gesture from someone who is trying to balance her daughter’s extracurricular activities with their value system. And I respect and admire that. And I can see where paying for all the dresses is her way of making up for picking a more expensive dress and pick all.

Still something about this whole thing just rubs me the wrong way. Boy can I look a gift-horse in the mouth.


As a post-script: Kevin was kind enough to understand that my work load did not allow for that number of errands today, so he took care of the running around. So his afternoon schedule went like this: home for lunch, take the kid back to work, run out to a going away party, run kid to school, wait at school, bring kid home, relax briefly, take kid to hair appt, come home, pick kid up. …he’s a good man, that one.