Early in our marriage we decided to become a one-income family so Debbie could stay home with the kids.

This of course was tough for our young family to do. Money was tight. We had to do without and find bargains wherever we could.

Debbie and the kids were grocery shopping.  As they wheeled down the sugar isle she was delighted to find a bargain price for sugar. I don’t know how it is at your house, but with three kids, we went through a lot of sugar. This was one of those special deals, a super low price, used to get customers in the door. It was much lower than the normal price.

It was an ideal time to stock up.

One problem – the special price was limited – one per customer. But with Debbie and the three kids as customers, she could get four bags at the super low bargain price. Great!!

She put a bag in the cart and started passing each of the kids a bag, so they could take it through the checkout line.

Time to save some money.

But Richard didn’t want to play along. “I’m not a customer mom.”

Debbie tried to explain how to play the grocery game. How he would be a customer when he bought his bag of sugar.

“That would be cheating. I’m not really a customer. That’s lying.” Tears started running down his cheeks. His ethics could not be swayed.

We got one bag of bargain sugar.

Just for the record Richard, if you get the Internet up there and you’re reading this, I think it would’ve been OK to get the cheap sugar. You really would have been a customer if you only bought one bag of sugar.

And also for the record, I was always really proud of your honesty and integrity. Even when it cost us money.