Don't Let Us In

Newsletter 2018-07-30

It’s the classic childhood dilemma: What should you do when you hit a baseball and it  breaks someone’s window? Should you knock on that person’s door and confess or run away and start a new life in a foreign country? It all depends on if you have a conscience and whether or not your allowance covers plane tickets.

I never ran into this dilemma as a kid. I only played baseball for one year, and I didn’t have a single hit all season (although the baseball hit me twice, which were two of the only times I ever made it on base). My lack of hand-eye coordination spared me from this morality question, but it came back in full force on our family vacation this week. My wife and I rented a house in St. Louis for a few days so we could take our kids to all the free museums. We think culture is important, but only if we don’t have to pay for it. But no trip is truly free. The hotel was going to be our biggest expense, and it didn’t seem like it was going to end well. Caging four children and two…