As a teen, I remember hearing a story, perhaps in some Dale Carnegie book, about a pair of youngsters who thought they could earn some extra spending money. They tallied up all of their chores and little tasks they had done around the house and outdoors, figured out how much time they spent on these, calculated the monetary value of their work, determined the minimum wage, and left a note for their mother before leaving for school with the bill for their labor.

When they got home, they found a much longer list that their mother had written out, noting all that she had done in a day, without the charges to the kids. Her son and daughter replied with little note. “Sorry. Thanks, mom,” the two wrote. “We had no idea how much you do for us.”

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in Georgia. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His Twitter account is @JohnTures2.