My Father's mantra when I was growing up was to take care of your things that way instead of spending your money replacing broken or worn things, you can buy new things. ok....his other mantra was that 'there just aren't enough hours in the day.' He was a workaholic, working all the OT he could get in the Steel Mill to counter the periods of unemployment, plus doing all of the handy work, carpentry, eltrical, mechanical, plumbing, landscaping, painting, roofing, washing, scrubbing, cleaning, welding, fixing, and maintenance at our house, both of my grandparents houses and for some of the neighbors as well. He would work all day and then in the evening, when my mother would make him stop to get showered and spend time with my brother and I, he would recite his famous litergy.

At first I thought yeah Dad is right, if there were more hours in the day, I could play more each day, watch more TV, relax more, sleep more, and do my homework slower. As I got a little older and interested in things like the Solar System and NASA and the like, I decided that if I lived on Pluto the day is over six times longer, but it is really cold there. On Mercury, it takes 58.7 Earth days for the planet to rotate once, man you could do a lot on a Monday there!! Then again a Mercurian Year is only 88 Earth days.

At eight or nine years old I thought this would be cool, because the school year would only be about 50 or so days, but if I aged every 88 days, which using Mercurian days would actually be less than two days, I would die of old age in less than 25 weeks!! Who wants that?? I had these kind of thoughts a lot, I was a weird kid. Come to think of it, I grew up to be a wierd man. And here is where the story evolves. As I grew into my college years, I remember telling my friends that there are not enough hours in the day. This of course came from the fact that I only had 5 hours a day to split between homework, studying and sleep.

Then I got married and wanted more hours each day to spend with my beautiful wife. After our first child was born, I needed more hours to spend watching him learn and grow, spend with my beautiful wife, and take care of the things that had been moved to the back burner, like cutting grass, washing cars, and the like. Two more children later and I REALLY REALLY want more hours, not for me but for my beautiful wife!! She needs more time to be able to take a long hot shower, get plenty of sleep, relax while I take my turn with the laundry and still have time left to spend with me.

Finally we reach the and son and son part. My eldest, a child with the mental capacity far greater than his 4 years, is figuring out how things work. I loosened light bulbs in the bathrooms to be frugal as per my other story, and when we are in said bathrooms, the little genius tells me 'Daddy has more money to buy steak' as he points to the unilluminated bulbs. He gets the water pitcher out of the refridgerator and tries to close the door quickly saying, 'Daddy does not want to spend his money on the electric bill, he wants to buy milk and things instead.' And, after realizing that we can not go to the park, the playground, Target, and his Uncle's house on the same day because there is not enough time between his sister's nap and bedtime snack to accomplish all of this, he showed me that he truly understands when he said 'Daddy I want the days to be longer.' I asked what he meant having a good idea already and I smiled broadly when he said 'more than 24 hours, so that we can do more every day.'