For the golden corn and the apples on the trees
For the golden butter and the honey from the bee
For fruits and nuts and berries that grow beside the way
For birds and bees and flowers, we give our thanks today

Blessings on the meal, have a lovely lunch crunch!

I was waiting for Dorje’s mom to pick him up this evening when she called, saying her car had been stolen. Luckily she’d just come from yoga, and was relatively calm. The yoga teacher, however, apparently wasn’t. The car guard has learned some new words I’m sure.

I told Dorje his mom’s car had been stolen. He put on a fake sad face – the kind when you’re supposed to feel sad. It was about the same on the trauma scale as running out of tahini. But then the tears turned real when he realised, horror of horrors, no, not that mom wasn’t insured, but that he’d have to walk to school.

I briefly considered the “in my day I had to walk 10 miles in the snow” talk, except that 150 metres, and the lack of snow (ever) isn’t very compelling.

I just hope she is insured and they pay out quickly in case I’m expected (and this really is a horror of horrors) to lift in the early morning.

Friends tease me that when Dorje starts to rebel, nothing could upset me more than if he were to become a stockbroker.

Well he’s not far away. He was given a game of Junior Monopoly for Christmas – a stripped down, quicker and simpler version of the board game I’m sure almost everyone reading this has played.

He loved it. He enjoyed counting his money, making sure he was given the right change, and, most of all, beating me. Since he can’t ready very well, the fact that he’s landing on “Ferris Wheel” or “Nitro Speed Track” makes little difference – but he spots the dollar amount straight away.

He soon “progressed” to ordinary Monopoly. Ordinary in the sense that it’s the one I played as a child. The cheapest property is in Durban, Musgrave Road, and the most expensive, Eloff Street in Johannesburg, costs R400. The first game petered out – Monopoly can be quite slow-moving at the best of times.

But he was soon back, and this time went for the modern edition, released in 2002. The main attraction was that it featured R50 000 notes, rather than the R500 notes that were the height of desirability in the old version. The most expensive property is a much more believable Clifton, but still a bargain at R40 000.

Someone once said Monopoly was an anti-capitalist game, as it shows the inevitable conclusion to the system. One person ends up with everything and there’s nothing left to play for. If that’s the intention, it’s backfired horribly. I was soon on my knees against Dorje, dominating with hotels on both Clifton and Franschoek, and he had a worryingly lascivious gleam in his eye and chuckle in his voice as the threw his winnings in the air, showering in his riches.

He enjoys counting and playing shopkeeper immensely, and in real life refuses to spend his savings on anything. If he wants something that I’m not going to buy him, he’ll ask and ask, and when I eventually suggest he uses his own money, he soon shuts up.

In fact, writing this now, I’m starting to become suspicious about how he always “forgets” his money for snack sale at school.

I asked him today what he thought was worth spending his money spend on. Water, electricity and food (in that order) were his first suggestions. “What if you still have money left over after that?” I prompted. “Space rockets!” was next in line, to my relief. Then, more worryingly, he said he wanted to open a bank.

But he’d give all his money to those who had none.

So, we wait to see what sort of rebellious stockbroker he’ll turn out to be.