Toward the end of fifth grade, a new girl named Robbie (which is short for Roberta) appeared in Chloe’s class. She quickly became friends with Chloe and Katherine. Over what remained of fifth grade, into summer and then into middle school Chloe and Katherine integrated Robbie into their friendship. One of their favorite shared activities has been watching horror movies. Chloe and I watched Chloe’s first R-Rated movie, The Exorcist over the course of a few evenings during the summer. From there Chloe’s enjoyment of horror movies has continued.
There was a time when I believed Chloe was interested in horror movies because they were some kind of forbidden thing that some parents permitted and most parents did not permit. We let her play the 1980s PG-rated Poltergeist for a fifth grade party and for her sixth grade Halloween party we let her play a PG-13 horror film. But by the time she sat through The Exorcist in its entirety, she clearly liked horror movies for their thrill alone.
It seemed only natural to assume that Robbie and Katherine had likewise graduated from the forbidden activity appeal to the thrill appeal when it came to horror movies, and so Amelia was happy to take the three girls to see an R-Rated horror movie in the theater with their respective parents’ permission.
Robbie and Katherine arrived at our house late that Saturday afternoon. Chloe had tried to get them to come earlier when they could see the half-price matinee so that the cost of the outing would not set her back more than a week’s worth of allowance, but she was not successful. The girls by contrast had money their parents had given them for the outing. At the concession stand, Robbie and Katherine loaded up with candy, popcorn and soda. Chloe selected the small serving of nachos.
As the horror film became more intense on the big screen in front of them, Chloe was mesmerized. But Katherine and Robbie began to loose their nerve. Near the peak of the action, Katherine and Robbie were so frightened that they wanted to leave. Chloe was frightened by the movie too, but she was more frightened that Katherine and Robbie’s desire to leave would prevail.
The difference in attitude perhaps boiled down to economics. Katherine and Robbie had not financed the outing themselves. They did not value the difference in price between the matinee time and the late afternoon. They did not value the cost of their load of movie snacks. In contrast, Chloe’s personal spending operated on a budget and this movie was a big piece of that budget. Chloe wanted to stomach the most frightening part of the horror movie on the big screen in front of her because she had paid for the thrill and it would be a long time before her funds caught up to pay for the next thrill.
As parents, Amelia and I like the effect of the allowance. It means Chloe and Philip make decisions more along the lines of the way we make decisions. We first started the allowance when Philip turned five years old. When he suddenly needed to pay for a visit to McDonalds, his interest in McDonalds dropped in comparison to the video game he was saving up to purchase.
At the end of the movie, all three girls were glad they stayed, but Chloe was still upset that the other two had even considered leaving. At home with Chloe alone, Amelia explained how Robbie and Katherine did not have an allowance and that influenced how much they valued what they purchased. It was one of those moments where Chloe saw clearly that she was being raised differently than other kids. And perhaps Chloe liked herself and her upbringing just a little bit more after getting a chance to see and understand the alternative.
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