Why can�t a person be in two places at once? Don�t explain physics to me. I am not interested. I might be interested if you offered to pick up Day-Hay and A. from school at the same time I am supposed to be at a special school board meeting. If I weren�t interested, I�d at least listen. I would owe you that much�and more.

If I really tried, I probably could find someone to pick up the girls for me but I�m not in the mood to owe. Real emergency help is free. The neighbor who came over and spent the night with my kids when Mr. Philately was rushed to the hospital with chest pains, for example, would be horrified if I offered a favor in return. (Mr. Philately�s pains were heart-related that night but turned out to be part of a congenital condition which has been fairly easily controlled.) Any other type of help costs.

The local suburban-mother-favor economy has strict rules. If you ask a favor, you owe a favor. If you repay with too small a favor, you still owe a favor. If you repay a favor with too large a favor, they�ll hate you because doing a favor will have resulted in owing a favor. Help for bad planning or as a way out of the normal flotsam and jetsam of suburban life costs you.

Being a mother who works-at-home-and-abroad adds another wrinkle to the situation. Never mind that I am home after school all but one day a week. Never mind that anyone I might ask for help knows that and knows that I return my favors as required and that my children are no where near being charity cases. No, reality has nothing to do with it. Status does. Status determines whether one must pay the martyr tax.

When a work-solely-from-home mom does a favor for a work-at-home-and-abroad mom, the local economy allows her to collect the martyr tax, although some are too classy to collect. She gets to say some variation of �Sure. I�ll do it. I guess it�s hard to do the routine things when you�re so busy.� Although many will deny it, the phrase means �I�ll pick up the slack for you since you�re too busy working outside to take care of your own kids as well as I do.� I�ve fantasized about imposing the martyr tax in return but it would have to be said with the irony that suggests �how could you be so busy when you do nothing important all day� and I�ve never really believed that cruelty is the proper response to cruelty. Others who work-at-home-and-abroad are afraid to impose a tax for fear of a boycott.

Taking routine help often enough to be considered a charity case has its own costs and the children pay them. If the moms of charity cases fail to recognize their status in the community, their own children usually don�t miss it. The children are not left out but they hear the sighs (or the whispers of them) in the way arrangements are made for them and traded between one mom and another. The children of ditsy work-solely-from-home mothers pay but the children of ditsy work-at-home-and-abroad mothers pay more because someone must pay the martyr tax.

There is no free lunch�or free pick-up. Here in the suburbs help will cost you. As in financial matters, I prefer paying as I go to using credit. I guess I�ll pick up the girls, drop them off, and be a little late to the meeting. I just hope I don�t end up owing anything to the other attendees.

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