The price of their toys

In a former life, I had a spouse who used to say the difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.

That came back to me last weekend as I visited with one of my nieces at our family reunion in central Texas. Since I know Arge is the COO for a homebuilder in Chicago and that industry hasn't done well anywhere for a couple of years, I had asked her about her job situation. I'm pretty sure her income is well within the six-figure range, although her personal ethics and the situation in the industry could easily have dropped it somewhat from the figure I once heard. As a teacher, my personal take on income is that all we need is enough money to pay the rent and buy the groceries, and anything above that is pretty much gravy; a lot of mine goes toward helping my kids with the wrinkles that come up in their lives.

Arge's goes to toys. A little while earlier, I had heard her swapping details with my Number One Son about the new  power boat she and her husband bought earlier this summer, a fine little craft that I'm sure cost more than my house is worth, even with the boating market farther suppressed than housing.

I'm too slow, of course, to see the irony of the situation I was in: In another life, Arge is quite well-to-do; much of the time outside of office hours (and commuting in Chicago), she spends traveling to the condo where her boat is stored and she and her husband zip up and down a lake at speeds over 100 mph. She wears four diamond studs that are each twice the size of the engagement ring I once wore. Her life is pretty much a celebration.

But in the life I was in, she was sitting next to me in a $10 lawn chair from Wal-Mart in the peanut gallery of a washers tournament in my brother's backyard. Her husband was one of four players tossing a stack of $2 washers from one end of the court to the other, parking his rum and diet cola on a stand my brother had built from scrap lumber and a discarded 12-inch floor tile. We stayed there—some combination of four to eight players and six or eight folks in the peanut gallery—until nearly 4 in the morning.

I love my niece, and I always speak of her with great pride because I feel lucky to share a few genes with her. And I love it that she appreciates her roots enough to be the first to show up at our family reunion every year. And I love it that her husband determinedly joins the washers match even when his foot is so tender from gout that he can barely wear his shoes.

But for all the expense of their toys, it's my brother—whose toys don't have to go far beyond the accouterments of a washer game—who shows me the difference between the men and the boys. I have no idea what my brother's financial situation is, but I'd be willing to bet it's not very different from mine. But he opens his home, he opens his heart, and he reminds us that paying the rent and the groceries is about all it takes to make life good.

I like the price of his toys.