My name is Mark, and my twelve-year-old son, Jake, had spent almost an entire year saving for one thing.
A mountain bike.
Not a hand-me-down.
Not a birthday gift.
Not something my wife Sarah and I had bought for him.
Jake wanted to earn it himself.
For eleven months and three weeks, he saved almost every dollar he made.
He mowed lawns.
He did extra chores.
He helped neighbors with small jobs whenever someone needed an extra pair of hands.
He even turned down things he wanted because he had one goal in mind.
The bike.
Every dollar went into his savings.
He kept track of everything in a spiral notebook.
Five lawns here.
A few small jobs there.
Fifteen dollars at a time.
He wrote down every payment and every dollar he saved.
By the time he finally had enough, he had earned $420.
And when he bought the bike, he couldn’t stop smiling.
It was a matte-green mountain bike, and to anyone else, it might have looked like just another bicycle.
To Jake, it represented almost a year of his life.
Every lawn he had mowed.
Every weekend morning he had gotten up early.
Every time he had decided not to spend his money when his friends were doing things he wanted to join.
He was incredibly proud of himself.
Then, two weeks later, it was gone.
Not stolen.
Not lost.
Destroyed.
