How to Make Big Money in Two Months

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When summer comes in Pinamar, the money-hounds come out in swarms.

Why not?

The population swells to half a million in January and February from the 20,000 of us year-rounders. So sell the visitors anything you can, and if you’ve got no scruples then sell at any price, too.

Jack up the prices, charge more. Make them cough up extra for beach tents, cobs of sweet corn, cups of coffee and McDonald’s Happy Meals, ice cream and most dinners at any establishment. Choose money! And lots of it!

I should know. I’ve been done for an extra peso here and there, an extra ten here and there. All in a town my family calls home.

Well, I thought I’d seen it all – and paid it all. But I drove past the police station and the post office to the town center and pulled up at the side of the street to park and there they were: five freshly painted and dug-in “No Parking” signs.

I looked for a new place to park now that my usual spot was illegal. There a few yards away was a man with a beaming smile standing at the entrance of a new parking lot in what was once an empty area of shrubs and whatnot.

You could see it in his eyes. He was doing the calculations. Roll them in and charge them all.

Why not? Making money is the thing when summer comes around in Pinamar. And it gets you thinking. Why not? When in Pinamar, choose money.

The Married Life

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My eldest daughter is thinking ahead.

“When I get older, Daddy, can I get married?” she asks.

“Of course.”

Well, she’s got it all sorted out. She’s going to marry her brother, who’s at her side. They’re having a wonderful time playing with a toy castle, racing horses and knights, taking them up and down stairs, raising and lowering the drawbridge, and firing off cannon balls.

Then my five-year-old daughter decides it would be swell to play with the dollhouse, with its wooden furniture and finger-sized dolls. But my son doesn’t want to. He prefers the castle and the knights, the horses and the cannon balls. Especially the catapult.

“Come on,” she says to her future hubbie.

“No, castle,” says the three-year-old boy.

“Humph!” says the bride-to-be. “Well, if you’re not going to then I’m going to play on my own. That’s what I’m going to do. And I’m not going to marry you when I grow up.”

My son looks up at her and then down at the catapult. He slowly twists the catapult round and puts a red ball on it and then drops his hand down. The red ball sails across the room and into the living room of the dollhouse, taking out mother doll, father doll and all the kids, the kitchen table, fridge and the couch. And the pretend dinner, too.

War ensues and I think, ah, the married life.

Excavating

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My son is finally getting the hang of pooing in the toilet.

Oh, the relief for us parents. Bye, bye to soiled pants and floors, and mishaps at restaurants and in the garden and at parks.

We’re on a roll. He’s gone a couple of weeks with clean pants. And he’s into it. He’ll run his three-and-a-half-year-old body to the toilet when the urge calls, no matter where we may be. He doesn’t give a toss about the mess or the stench or the puddles of a gas station toilet. He’s in there, pants down and doing it.

Evacuating, if we wish to be more couth about it.

Yesterday on the beach he turned to me and said, “Poo.” We bolted down the crowded beach for a couple hundred yards and then across the scorching dry sand – hot, hot, hot – to the toilet at a beach restaurant, just in time to evacuate.

We parents are proud and he’s proud – and curious. Very much so.

I walked into the bathroom today and there he was with his head down the toilet. I cleared my throat and asked, “What are you doing?”

He pulled his head out of the bowl followed by his arms and a flashlight and he looked up at me and said, “Where poo go?”