A recent question on Facebook inquired how much allowance did you receive as a teenager. Apparently the question impelled lots of interest. I finally stopped reading all of the replies.

Silly me. I never realized that it is common for kids to earn their allowance. Heretofore, I had assumed that kids got allowances just because they were kids.

Indeed, some of the respondents received a modicum of cash regularly. Some acknowledged earning it. Some didn’t. I was prompted to recall the occasional discussion on the subject that I would hear as a kid. Those conversations always induced me to question the whole allowance notion from the get-go.

Why prompt kids to discuss this among their piers? Last I checked, there was never a Bretton Woods Allowance Agreement that standardized the practice worldwide. Some kids are destined to get the short end of the allowance stick, plain and simple.

OK, how about me, you ask. How big was my allowance ? Well, as a kid I worked 5 1/2 hours a day, every day, in the dairy barn. 2 1/2 in the morning, 2 at night.

I guess that was my allowance, but I never broached the subject with Dad. Well aware of his childhood poverty, to even ask would have been an indiscretion. I didn’t need it anyway. Where was I going to spend an allowance? In the haymow?