When the Gloves Come Off

There comes a time in every dad's life when he must lay down the law. Even if he thinks gruff words are mean, a father must occasionally let his children know he means business. My time to play sheriff came on the first cold day of the season.

I looked my children in their eyes and said, "I'm sick and tired of you two losing gloves every winter. This year, your mother and I are supplying each of you with one pair of gloves. If you happen to lose these gloves, then it's up to you to buy any and all replacement gloves."

"Whatever you say, Dad," my eight-year-old son said as he gave me a look that all but said he thought I was joking.

"I'm not joking. If you lose your gloves, you will buy a new pair," I said.

My children assured me their glove-losing days were behind them. And as much as I wanted to take them at their word, experience has taught me otherwise.

By my estimation, which is quite conservative, my eight-year-old son has lost 21 pairs of gloves since kindergarten. My six-year-old daughter, while not as prolific a glove loser as her brother, is no slouch herself. With only 1 and a half years of school under her belt, she has lost 8 pairs of gloves.

This history of carelessness is no doubt what inspired me to come up with my brilliant plan. The hope, of course, is that spending their own money for replacements would put a stop to all glove losing. And while I thought this was the solution to my problem, apparently I thought wrong.

Within a few days of our talk, my son had lost his gloves. Of course, he didn't tell me this. I learned he was without gloves when I listened to a phone message from the people at his school. The call went like this:

Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Ware, I'm calling because it has come to our attention that your son does not own a pair of gloves. We encourage parents to send their children to school dressed appropriately for the weather. At this time of the year in Colorado this means coats, hats and—you guessed it—gloves. Will you be decent parents and buy your son a pair of gloves?

That night I asked my son why the people at the school were under the impression that his parents didn't care enough about him to buy him gloves.

"Well, they asked me if I had gloves and I said I didn't. They asked me if you would buy me some and I told them my dad said he wouldn't buy me any gloves."

"Do you want me to look like an unfit parent?"

He shrugged his shoulders and lowered his head, and said, "Well, you said you wouldn't buy any more gloves."

"These people think I didn't buy you any gloves. Next time I want you to tell them your parents bought you gloves and you lost them. I don't want any more of these phone calls. Understand me?

"Yeah," he said.

"Get money out of your bank. We're going to go get gloves right now," I said.

On the drive to our local Kohl's, I tried to understand where I went wrong as a parent. It's not like my wife and I haven't made numerous attempts to correct the glove-losing problem over the years. When my son was in kindergarten we devised lots of tricks in an effort to prevent him from losing gloves.

At first, my wife and I pinned his gloves to his coat sleeves, but our son managed to return home with just the pins attached to his sleeves. Next we bought gloves on a string, but our little boy came home with just the string and no gloves. Then we bought several pairs of the same gloves thinking if he lost a glove, he'd use a spare. Even this wasn't foolproof. Our son had this knack of losing all the gloves for the right hand.

My wife came to accept glove Iose as part of the process. In fact, she's more than willing to figure half a dozen pairs each year into the family budget. I, on the other hand, became fed up with the kids losing gloves. So this fall I shared with her my brilliant plan to correct this problem of lost gloves.

"Honey, we need to demand more of our kids. I think we should make them buy replacement gloves every time they lose a pair."

"What happens if they run out of money to buy gloves?"

"They'll wear socks on their hands,” I said.

"That's where I draw the line. I'm not crazy about this idea of yours, but we'll give it a try."

"Do you want to buy a few extra just in case?" I asked my son as he stared at the rack of gloves in Kohl's "l won't lose these gloves," he replied.

While I was skeptical about his claim, he seems to be keeping trece his gloves. Several weeks have gone by and my son has yet to lose his gloves.

l, on the other hand, have managed to lose my gloves and I'm on my Kohl's to buy a new pair with my money. But my son won't hear it from me, or the people at Kohl's.