Yesterday—good Lord, was it only yesterday?—I had a totally pointless fight with Son 1. I don't even know if "fight" is the right word. All I know is that—ironically for someone who talks and writes as much as I do—sometimes I really suck at explaining what I mean. (As a point of comparison, consider, "I never could teach my sons to do their math homework.")
If you are reading this and you have any suggestions for how I can fix it, please leave me a note in the comments.
Background
It all started ... well no, it started long before that. Years ago, when the boys were first graduating from college and starting out on their own, they authorized me to have access to their bank accounts. From time to time they needed little boosts of cash while they were getting their footing in the real world, and it was easier for me simply to transfer funds than to write a check, mail it, wait for it to arrive, and wait for them to deposit it.But it turns out that an arrangement like this is a lot easier to set up than it is to discontinue. The only way to cancel it is for the owner of the account (this means, respectively, either Son 1 or Son 2) to walk into the bank and ask for a new account number. (Actually two new numbers, one for checking and one for savings.) Then as the bank sets up the new accounts and transfers over all the history from old to new, the account owner has to say, "Oh yeah, one more thing: don't put my Dad on the new accounts." This is cumbersome. Also it's a nuisance in case (for example) the account owner has set up Direct Deposit for his paycheck, because now he has to re-set it with the new account number. Then he has to wait for the bank to issue new ATM cards, and all that. It's a pain. And since at this point Son 1 and Son 2 each live somewhere else, we haven't gotten around to dealing with it.
It's weird. If Father had ever had access to one of my bank accounts (which he never did, once I was in college), I would have been eager to shut off that access as soon as I possibly could. I suppose in some sense it is a vote of confidence that the boys have been so blasé about the issue.