With His Own Money

Zack has a new treasure.  James and I have been so amused by this story, I thought I would share it here.  Zack had a whopping three dollars to spend.  He normally doesn't have discretionary money (although he's old enough now that we're thinking of changing that) since we usually put any birthday money in a fund for him later, but a few weeks ago he traded his Daddy a three dollar book discount card for three dollars cash.  He had gotten the book discount card through Half Price Books' Summer Reading Program but the book he wanted was six dollars.  He was happy to read and earn another three dollar card, but you can only use one card per purchase.  They let us put his reading card toward Daddy's purchase and we gave him the cash in return (that was a difficult exchange to explain to him, I tell you!).  The next time we went, his six dollar book was gone and he picked out a three dollar book after all.  I'm not sure how much Zack understood of the transaction, but I think he was pretty pleased with the whole thing.  The next morning he was asking Daddy to take him out for garage sale shopping (he asks that even when he has no money.  I'm pretty sure the stop at the donut shop is his usual motivation).

Zack is a little intense about loving his belts, so I am not surprised that he notices any large or flashy belt buckle. He's particularly impressed with country singers and family photos from the eighties.  A couple of months ago we were looking at one such old photo - the whole family was dressed in our finest seventies regalia, but what did Zack want to know about?  He wanted to know exactly what was on Uncle Steve's belt buckle (oh you want to know too?  Silver buffalo nickels and turquoise.  Yep).  I actually had to rewind the Martha Stewart show today so that he could point out Clay Walker's belt buckle to me.  We didn't teach him this!

Zack found this particular beauty of a buckle at the garage sale.  It was marked five dollars.  He got some instruction from Dad on how you don't pay full price for items at a garage sale.  According to James, James sort of coaxed him through a little bargaining.  But if you listen to Zack's version, he "just told the man, 'I will not buy it for five dollars.  I will only buy it if it is TWO dollars!'"  Either way, he managed to walk away with a new belt buckle for two dollars.  He's soooo proud of it.  It's the first thing he's really bought with his own money and I think that makes it all the more precious.  Zack's convinced it is real silver and gold.  He says the man at the garage sale "took very good care of it by polishing it" and that Zack must also polish it to take care of it (hope the gold doesn't rub off too quickly).  He wants to sleep in it, but James convinced him it could damage the gold, so he very carefully drapes the belt over his closet door when he goes to sleep. 

When Zack brought this home I didn't think he had anywhere to put it, but he brought me a belt from two years ago that the buckle had torn out of.  It was a reversible style belt and the hardware just couldn't stand up to how he likes to tighten it down (why does he tighten his belt?? it's a mystery).  I broke out my crafting tools - it took the Crop-A-Dile and a scrapbook album post (you know how the extra pages come with extra posts and screws? Handy.) to attach this baby.  Scrapbooking hardware seems an odd choice but rivets were too shallow to go through two thicknesses of belt.  This solution is standing up to daily use!