An Eye on the Prize and a Hand on the Cash

Generally, a little economic chaos is good for a family. It keeps you from focusing on each other’s various personal shortcomings and keeps the eye always on the prize. The mortgage payment at the end of the month. A college education.

“You know, tonight I’ve got bunco,” my wife tells me at breakfast.

“Again?” I ask.

Remember how men used to get together for poker? Now the wives are getting together for these bunco games, where they gather in someone’s home to gamble a little, guzzle wine and joke about their sex lives. At least that’s what the husbands assume they’re doing. There could be more to bunco, but I doubt it.

The wives could be using these meetings to plot to take over the White House or reorganize the U.N. They could be talking Fed policy.

Or, generous as they are, these bunco girls could be figuring out how to make their husbands happier and more fulfilled.

They could be planning lavish weekends away with their husbands to reward us for taking a greater role in raising the kids. For all the little things we do that our dads didn’t. The dishes. The diapers. Algebra.

But I doubt it.

“Where’s Mom?” the little girl asks.

“Bunco,” I say.

“Who’s going to help me with my homework?”

“Call your sister,” I say.

Women. For a while, they had us thinking they were better than us, more dedicated and reliable, some of them, in fact, quite perfect.

Now we’re learning that women have their weaknesses, too.

They’re quick to make fun of us with our Final Four brackets, yet they’re all googly-eyed over those silly Oscar ballots.

They used to scold us over poker nights. Now they have this bunco, which apparently is a simple dice game where you rotate from table to table, wine sloshing everywhere, money exchanging hands. Laughter. Camaraderie.

At the end of the evening, the winner leaves with enough cash for a decent pair of shoes.

As they gamble these nights away, dark clouds gather over our once proud land. Dishes pile up. Homework, too. The republic may never recover.

In the morning, most everyone has a headache.

“What time did you get home?” I ask.

“Why?”

“Just curious.”

“Eleven,” she says, stirring her coffee, looking into it for answers.

“On a school night?” I ask.

“Yes, on a school night,” says bunco girl.

March is the money month. Everywhere you look there’s some school fund-raiser or a half-dozen silent auctions. At the spring fair, a silent auction. At the PTA dinner, yet another.

Eventually, all transactions will be made through silent auctions. Need a new car? Sign that list over there. Going to Greece? Try to outbid Bob and Lynda.

You readers turn to this space every week to find out what’s really going on in America, and I’m here to tell you that if these silent auctions don’t ruin us as a nation, bunco will.

“I never knew Charlotte was so much fun,” my wife says, recalling some bunco pal.

“I wouldn’t know,” I say.

Beware these Ides of March. The tax man cometh. Bunco is sweeping the land. There are all those silent auctions. Even those Nixon girls are haggling over money. Secret bunco junkies, probably.

Then last week, the Girl Scout cookie cash comes due. As always, we are short about 60 bucks.

What happens, usually, is that the Girl Scout cookie money comes in, and we tap into the envelope for emergency cash for school or dinner then wind up writing a check to cover the difference.

It’s check-kiting at its worst, the kind of monetary policy favored by Third World dictators. Orange County once invested this way. Enron, too.

“I hope,” I warn my wife, “that you didn’t use Girl Scout money for bunco.”

“Mighta,” she says without remorse.

Evidently, there’s a reason those Thin Mints look like poker chips. One day, they may replace cash.

“At school, guess who’s winning their NCAA bracket?” the boy asks.

“Your mom?”

“No, me,” he says.

Oh mother, where art thou? How come all of a sudden I feel like Hamlet?

“Talked to the tax guy today,” my wife says.

“And?”

“He says tennis lessons count as day care,” she says.

“In Brazil?”

“No, here,” she says.

Beware the wives of March.

Chris Erskine’s column is published on Wednesdays. His e-mail address is chris.erskine@latimes.com.