Hi! My name is Will Murray. Welcome to my home page on the Internet. I started designing pages professionally for the Internet before the first graphical Web browser, NCSA Mosaic, was developed. Once Mosaic arrived, the Web quickly turned graphical, and personal home pages became all the rage for college students around the world. Today, personal home pages have been replaced largely by social network sites, like Facebook and MySpace. This site serves as a homage to the home pages of the past, as well as a resource for linking to my various online accounts.
Looking for a different Will Murray? Doc Savage author, Canadian politician, U.S. conservationist, U.K. road safety specialist
I started using the alias "Willscrlt™" as my screen name as a charter member of America Online, and later as my online nickname on several dial-up bulletin board systems (BBSes) starting in 1988. I loved reading the tales of Robin Hood, Will Scarlet, and the other Merry Men when I was a child. I came up with the alias by combining my real name, "Will Murray" and the Robin Hood character's name, along with my reddish hair and a deliberate misspelling to keep things short.
While I have been very fortunate to be able to register the alias "Willscrlt" on most sites, I am not the only "Willscrlt" to be found on the Internet. The largest site I am aware of where this is the case is aol.com. Since "Willscrlt™" is my trademark, I am trying to resolve this problem to avoid confusion and identity problems.
I'm the Willscrlt with a real name of Will Murray from Sacramento, California, usually with a profile photo that matches the one shown above. To absolutely verify that a particular Willscrlt is me, check the site links below to see if there is a match. If not, you may have found an imposter. I'd appreciate it if you let me know.
You’re at the circus, Disneyland, the zoo, or or the fair. Suddenly your child spots his or her latest “must have” item. The finger points, the hopeful look appears in the eyes, and the words “I want it!” are uttered. What happens next can be an opportunity or a nightmare depending on how it plays out.
I suggest that when a child waaaants something, ask them if they want to buy it with their allowance (they do have an allowance, right?). If they don’t want to spend their money on it, then they have to trade something for it. Ask them which item at home will they part with in exchange for the shiny new thing. Obviously, the thing they have to give away needs to be something fairly equitable. No giving away furniture, sensible clothing, etc.—something else that was a shiny new impulse purchase is best. If the new thing is a big ticket item, the thing they give up needs to be important to the child, too. This helps them learn to value what they have and also understand that everything has a cost.
My parents also had several other good tricks up their sleeves.
For example, depending on the venue, sometimes we would go shopping at a discount store before some events and buy useful things like binoculars, hats (for sunny places), or non-melting pocket-sized snacks. Then we would take those with us. We could skip right past most of the expensive merchandise for sale since we already had everything we needed.
Instead of spur-of-the-moment snacks (popcorn, churros, sodas in plastic cups), we would plan our meals along with our activities. That helped us avoid hunger pangs and cravings. We usually included at least one snack item “splurge” (cotton candy or a funnel cake were popular since we couldn’t get those at home).
Instead of wasting money on disposable items (silly hats you never wear anywhere else, balloons, etc.), my parents would suggest that I purchase something collectible like a postcard, map, button, figurine, or something functional like a ceramic mug, t-shirt, or sweatshirt. I ended up with several very nice collections by the time I was in my teens, and the clothing I bought was not too zany to wear to school or to play.
I also collected sugar packages—many restaurants have custom imprinted ones in the dispensers on the table. Back home, I cut the packages open carefully with scissors, poured out the sugar into the sugar canister, attached a stamp hinge (used in stamp collecting), and attached the package to a scrapbook page. It made a neat memento and was free with the meal. When I got older, I switched to collecting stamps and business cards instead.
While I was young, my parents helped me with arranging and displaying my collections. It was quality family time, and the experience became far more valuable than the items cost. The great thing about any type of collectible is that you can look back at an item years later and remember the highlights of the entire trip. With candy or other disposables, there’s nothing left.
My parents usually had me wait to buy something until we were leaving. First, it taught me that patience leads to rewards (something you need to comprehend later in life when investing your money). Second, I often found other things along the way that I liked even better than the first thing I saw. If I’d spent my (or my parents’) money on the first thing I wanted, I’d have been sorry for it later.
I remember sometimes at the end of the day at Disneyland, we would have to rush from one corner of the park to another just to get back to the gift shop that had the item I wanted. The frantic rush to score the item made it all the more cherished in the long run. I never tossed aside my new acquisition the next day, because it had become something special to me. It was a carefully considered decision, and I had earned it while working together with my parents.
I look back on a lot of the things my parents did, and I wonder how they got so smart.
——
This blog entry is a response to Ellen S’ post on Momlogic titled, “Mommy, I Waaaaaaant It!“.
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