Ah, the joys of peer influence. I’ll call it influence because no one pressured him into it, simply introduced him to it. I’ll need to backtrack a bit in order to catch you up:

Z’s new favorite day is the Life Learners day. Las Vegas Life Learners is a group of unschoolers; all diverse, all accepting, all unique. I’ve never seen a bigger group of free-spirited, organic-loving, welcoming ladies. Each openly accepts the unique attributes in every person, treats all the children with respect and understanding and truly loves life. Their beliefs differ while their acceptance and love is the same. Z seemed to click with the kids instantaneously (the Yu-Gi-Oh lovers in the group certainly didn’t hurt) and the adults are ones I actually feel comfortable around.

Life Learners is where he was introduced to Nintendo DS. Although he’d known of the DS prior, he became entranced by the Pokemon game one of the kids had. He had to have it! I’ve never been one to dole out money left and right. We do what we can when we can but extra cash doesn’t float around our house much. We explained to him that if this was something he wanted, he would need to get the ball rolling.

And a’rollin’ he went: He got underway searching the web, finding the prices of the DS and the games. At the suggestion of an LVLL mom who had luck finding a used one, I showed him how to use Craigslist.org. Within two days, not only had he found a used unit being sold with three games, he also mastered the search engine! Seriously, I think he searched for a minimum of five hours!

Now came the hard part…the money. He had $15 from who-knows-where, plus tons of pennies. He had already counted out and placed his pennies into rolls which we exchanged for dollars at the bank, as well as added up the loose change he could scrounge throughout his room (that alone was no easy task, have you seen his room?!). His grand total on Wednesday was $23.00 and the unit he wanted was $100. We had arrangements to get the game Saturday morning. In two days he did enough chores (and some finagling for early birthday money from one grandma) to come up with $102! You should see the list of chores: cleaning bathrooms, vacuuming, wrapping presents, raking yards, helping with dishes. He did so impressively, he even got a tip! And all this without a word of complaint. Who says our generation doesn’t have any work ethic?

He is now and probably for the remainder of the day, playing Eragon on his brand-new (to him), blue Nintendo DS. I’m so proud of his hard work, his diligence over his money and his optimism on working toward his goal. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen those attributes and it’s nice to have them back.