Front Porch Stories: Learning about life and paying the bills

By KATHY BOHANNON, Special to The Weekly

Being hardwired for certain things was easier before the whole world was cracked open for all to see.

I had just the women in my family to influence me, and they were pretty much housewives. I found out long after I was grown that one of my aunts actually had a few degrees and was in Europe studying art. Maybe she was the black sheep among the housewives.

There were many friends along the way who were being encouraged to be nurses or teachers, which was the thing back in the 60s and 70s. It’s possible that some girls in my vicinity who might have had loftier goals like getting law degrees or, perish the thought, becoming a doctor, were sent away to live with family in places like New York or even California.

With no desire to become a teacher or nurse, my goals were to be a wife, mom and someday, a writer. What I actually became is all those roles plus a bevy of corporate sales jobs and the occasional school clerk.

The parents were somewhat disconnected when it came to real life stuff like power bills and insurance. I’m sure they were just wading through life with four kids (I’m the youngest) and whatever goes with having an existence such as theirs.

I married at 17 and 47 years later, I can now laugh at not knowing that people had monthly bills that had to be paid. When we were married barely a week, I saw my young husband sitting at the kitchen table with a checkbook and papers in front of him. I asked him what he was doing, and he said he was paying the electric bill.

Paying the what? I asked him about it, and he said, “Yeah, you know, the light bill? The power bill?” I flipped the switch on the wall and the light turned off and back on. I explained to him that I thought when God said, “Let there be light” that there was, and that’s where it came from. I think my husband realized right then and there that he had a lot of work to do.

If mom and dad wrote checks and paid bills, I never knew about it. But I’m sure they did because we had lights and electricity, and even water. They drove cars and I suppose they had insurance as well.

Having reached my first goal in life, I wasn’t very interested in learning about things other than what my new husband wanted to eat for lunch and dinner. Motherhood happened four years later, and by that time I had learned all I needed to know about managing a household and working full time at a job I hated.

Now it was time to know which end the diaper went on.

Yes, I’m selling myself short, but considering the information people have these days, I may as well have been raised by wolves and lived in a cave. And this is just about knowledge of day to day things, because I really had good parents.

Fifty-ish years later, I’m thankful to know a bazillion more life skills now that I did as a young bride trying to understand the “light” that God provides. But of course, I would have enjoyed knowing I had a world of options waiting in the wings if I could have just reached out and grabbed some.

Today, I appreciate all of the information and options we have in this culture like paying the electric bill and even insurance…online.

Kathy can be reached at [email protected].