My daughter’s bank account is like Fort Knox. Impregnable. Money goes in. Nothing ever comes out. She has just completed her first year of full-time employment after graduating from college a year ago. During that year, we have been attempting to launch her on the road to financial independence. Accordingly, she has been largely responsible for her own expenses, subject to certain exceptions such as education, family-related travel and, of course, her expenses when she is home visiting her parents. She is very creative at exploiting these exceptions.

So, not surprisingly, we and other family members see alot of her. Most of her vacation time has been spent visiting her grandparents in Florida. Weekends are spent visiting her parents in the Hamptons or her aunt and uncle on Long Island. Prior to her arrival, we generally receive a shopping list of items she would like us to have ready for her visit. The requested quantities are invariably large enough to assure that she has a week’s worth of leftovers to bring back with her. Her dry cleaning tends to get left with ours and picked up a week later. We find ourselves a little lighter on soap, shampoo and toothpaste after one of her visits. She keeps close track of our whereabouts in between visits just in case we sneak off to Costco without her so she can text us her request list.

Her creative interpretation of rules is not new.  When she was very young, she was once punished and told she could not have dessert. She queried, “What about diabetic ice cream? Does that count?” When we went sightseeing, we had a rule that each of the kids could have only one souvenir at each stop. She would buzz about the gift shop furiously and come to the cash register with her hands filled with 8-10 items. I would remind her that she was only allowed one souvenir. She would identify one of the items and say, “That is my souvenir.” Then she would point at the remaining pile of pens, pencils, pads, erasers and books and declare, “The rest are school supplies!”