I am not sure exactly how old I was when it started. Probably around 9 or 10.<\/p>\n
It was around Christmas time, and I sang a little children’s ditty. There are various versions, but here’s the version that was sung in our playground.<\/p>\n
Jingle bells, Batman smells,
\nRobin flew away.
\nFather Christmas lost his whiskers,
\nFlyingTAA<\/a><\/define>.
\nHey!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n(Sure, it doesn’t make much sense, but have you ever eaten curds-and-whey? sat on a tuffet? seen a spider sit? All good children’s poems are absurdist.)<\/p>\n
My father, Joe, was amused by this rhyme; he hadn’t heard it before. <\/p>\n
He made some comment that surprised me – he thought that, as I grew up, I would forget many of my childhood rhymes. I disagreed, and after some discussion, an offer was put on the table: If I gave my father one dollar that Christmas, then, on every Christmas Day after that that I could remember the poem, he would pay me 20c for the recital.<\/p>\n
This was a tough bet to accept. At that age, a dollar was a lot of money for me. I was going to have to make some sacrifices, scrimping for the first five years until the debt was paid, but then I was going to be on Easy Street, collecting twenty cents a year, every year, for virtually no effort. I took up the bet, and paid over my dollar.<\/p>\n
I collected a few twenty cent performance fees over the next few years, but then I started to forget – I remembered the words, but completely forgot about reciting them on Christmas Day. I hadn’t even collected my full dollar back.<\/p>\n
Then came computers – or more accurately, computers with time cards, and AUTOEXEC.BATs.<\/p>\n
One Christmas afternoon when I was about 17, Joe turned on the family computer, and asked me quizzically “What on Earth does this message ‘Batman smells!’ mean?”<\/p>\n
“Ah ha!” I cried, recited the poem and reminded him of the bet, and demanded twenty cents. I was a lot more diligent in my collections after that. <\/p>\n
One year, during a period of high interest rates, I worked out that, because I had missed a few key early years and with rates the way they were, I was never going to get the real-value of a dollar back. Fortunately, interest rates dropped again, and one year (when I was in my early thirties) no-one had any change, and I received a whole dollar as a performance fee.<\/p>\n
Everyone was happy. I was on Easy Street, and my father had purchased a very cheap Christmas family tradition.<\/p>\n