Kitchen Scales

As a lot of privileged white middle-class American children do, I found myself on the cusp of my junior year of college, softened by homemade cooking and dining hall convenience. This was the year that I had to buy kitchen equipment to outfit my tiny apartment kitchen and, horrors upon horrors, cook for myself.

My dad was the main chef in my family, but I didn’t follow after his (meat-eating) (expensive) footsteps. I made do for the first couple months, tentatively trying out recipes like black bean burgers and Borsofozelek, a Hungarian recipe that is basically peas, milk, flour, and spices—a godsend for me. 

That, though, was not enough for my father. When I mentioned wanting to bake, he insisted that I buy a kitchen scale so I wouldn’t have to worry about overflouring my recipes due to unreliable measuring cups. I brushed him off—I wasn’t a serious baker like him, Mr. Uses Forty Pounds of Butter Over the Span of Two Weeks in December to Bake Cookies for Everyone in a Thirty Mile Radius, and I had measuring cups.

Two days later, thanks to the magic of Amazon, I went down to the mailroom and found a set of Pyrex and a kitchen scale waiting for me.

I never went back to those cups.

Work Now, Play Later

The “Johnson family motto” is in all likelihood a team effort between my parents, but since this piece is about my dad he’s going to get all the credit. You’re welcome, R Paul.

My dad was a procrastinator in college, but marriage heals all illnesses (or so every other Christian college attendee seems to believe) and as I knew him, he was a capable man. He never got fired from a job, he attended Bible study, he got up dutifully early on the weeks that he volunteered to prepare communion, and he never missed a credit card payment (not that my childhood self understood credit cards). 

“Work now, play later” was the shorthand phrase that both of my parents threw out to mean “I know you don’t want to do this now, but you have to do the work before you reap the rewards.”

“Work now, play later” meant that I wasn’t allowed to play Pokémon Yellow on weekdays, instead being forced to do my homework, brandish sticks at my brother as we ran around the backyard, and read on the Saturdays that I got up early. “Work now, play later” meant that my mom dragged us to school at 6 a.m. and dragged herself out of school at 5:30 p.m. so she could sit on her favorite living room chair and watch Top Chef without a stack of papers to grade beside her.

Sometimes, when I’m tempted to roll back over and sleep, to play video games and put off my prepping for another day, a voice in my head whispers, Work now, play later. I can’t tell you that I always listen to it. But it persists within me still.

I Bonds

Occasionally, my father links some random money article in our family group text and says something like, “You have to check out [insert some financial term I’ve never heard of in my life]! I’m going to start doing this.” Truth be told, it’s rare that I click on the articles. I wasn’t interested when he watched Jim Cramer on Mad Money when I was growing up, even in spite of Cramer’s wild soundboard (I can still hear Sellsellsell), and I wasn’t particularly interested now. I had my savings account and my 401k.

Two years ago, though, he told us about I bonds. Can I explain to you what they are? No. Are they for sure the best investment strategy for me in my twenties? Probably not. But can I be bothered to understand how stocks work and invest in the stock market? Hell no.

So come December, I buy my I bonds and pat myself on the back for not letting my money decay in my savings account. We’ll see if he convinces me to invest in money markets next.

80s Music

My father is not immune to the wild thing that parents do when it comes to media—they get incredulous when you mention not knowing/seen/listened to something that was released a decade before you were born.

“What?” he would say while his Dad Tunes playlist bounced in the back, “you don’t know The Cars/Electric Lights Orchestra/Phil Collins/[some movie that came in the 80s]??” As if I was meant to absorb the classics in the womb.

But did I choose Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” when I was looking for a song to round out my karaoke? Do I adore Phil Collins and Lucy Dacus’s banger version of “In the Air Tonight?” Was my father right about the songs he loves being worth my while? Yes.

Password Managers

There are times when as a teacher, I am the epitome of “do as I say, not as I do.” Thankfully, after my father bought a family subscription to a password manager, password security is not one of those fields. (Spending money on gacha games, however, still remains an area of growth.)

Other than my computer password, whose hogwash I religiously memorize and key in every morning only to be forcibly usurped every three months thanks to company policy, I am content to let the little app in my phone remember all the generated combinations of capitals, symbols, and numbers. 

He was, unfortunately, wrong about which password system manager to use. After dragging my feet about putting all my passwords into this safe, he texted me a month ago: “Hey! There was a security breach at [former password management company], so I’m transferring all my passwords to Bitwarden.” I sighed. I eventually made a Bitwarden account a week ago; however, I am still waiting for divine motivation before I type in all those nonsensical characters into another piece of software again.

Alex Johnson

Alex Johnson (‘19) is a high school English teacher in Massachusetts. She spends her days being an uncool adult who enjoys reading romance novels and explaining niche rhythm game strategies.