If the U.S. economy is running into trouble, you can’t blame our family. This summer, the cup of entrepreneurialism hath been running over to such a degree that cash is now absolutely sluicing around the household.
I keep coming across little piles of coins, and wadded up dollar bills stuffed into small handbags, and damp, folded-up currency stuck to the insides of the washing machine. There’s money jingling in sundress pockets and cargo-pant pockets and coin purses and in the bottom of the bag we use to carry towels to the swimming pool. The place, as I say, is awash in legal tender — and none of it is mine. It all belongs to our children, four out of five of whom have discovered during this recession-teetering summer how to turn spare time into hard cash.
The other day, for instance, I was upstairs picking coins out of the dryer when I heard the younger girls shouting in front of the house. I didn’t think much of it until I saw a car pull into our driveway. A woman got out and walked across the lawn to where, I could now see, the girls had put a little table set with a pretty cloth. On the table was displayed a motley selection of plastic containers. They had put up a sign: “POSHENS FOR SALE.” I went down to investigate.
“… and this is Bliss Water, and this is Bee Water, and this is Soap Water …” the 8-year-old was saying. There was Babby Water — “it’s for rubbing it on babies” — and Love Water, along with greenish-flecked Poison Water and a murky yellow concoction labeled … Cod Water.
“Ew!” said I.
The 7-year-old looked at me, affronted. “It’s not ‘ew.’ It’s made with fish oil. Very healthy!”
To my dismay, their customer agreed to pay $1 for a bottle of Soap Water. “Wait, surely you’re overcharging,” I said, butting in.
“It seems a fair price to me,” said the buyer, clearly being prodded by the Invisible Hand. With a nod to the girls, she departed. The children, of course, were exultant. “See!”
It’s not all hucksterism around here, though; the older children have been engaged in honorable trades. And they’re learning lessons more valuable than “adults will buy any amount of useless junk if sweet children are selling it.”
The 11-year-old, for instance, has turned these dog days of summer into moneymaking dog-walking days, toddler-minding days, and cat-letting-in-and-letting-out days.
We’ll hear a door slam and a few seconds later see him streaking off on his bicycle toward one of his sources of income.
Children with jobs learn quickly that a) it feels very good to earn one’s pocket money, b) work can be crushingly dull and c) there’s a sometimes painful opportunity cost.
Our eldest is living testament. Unlike her 14-year-old peers, this summer she didn’t go to Australia or Paris. For her, there’s been no sailing school or theater camp, and she hasn’t brushed up on her Spanish or mastered her topspin. Instead she’s been making a packet as a small business co-owner, running the snack concession at our local pool. This has required her to sit in a grim little hut for long hours selling marked-up junk food to throngs of children.
“My job is trading trans fats for chlorine-soaked money,” she says, unsmiling. “Lots of money!”
It’s been a crash course in commerce. Now she gets why I resent paying $3 for a bottle of water at a museum; she knows retail from wholesale. Now she understands how irksome regulation can be. She and her partner hoped to sell ice cream sundaes and warm homemade brownies. Their customers asked for these things. Yet health code rules forbid it.
Now she sees what it takes to get a product to a customer, and how you have to slash prices to get rid of soggy ice creams when the power goes out and the freezer unfreezes.
She’s also been amazed by the ill manners of her customers, all of whom are educated suburbanites who ought to know better. (We suggested the children charge extra if people didn’t say please, with double penalties for the unforgivably crass, “Can I get?” instead of “May I have?” Alas, they wouldn’t do it.)
So it’s been a profitable and educational summer, all around. Emboldened by the whopping $2.10 that the little girls earned selling POSHENS the other day, they’ve been trying to monetize pretty much everything.
Just in time, I thwarted their attempt to peddle the new issues of MAGASENS that had just come in the mail.
And though I, too, felt the Invisible Hand tickling my ribs, I must tell you that the girls got nowhere with: “We’ll brush our teeth twice, if you give us a dollar.”
Examiner Columnist Meghan Cox Gurdon is a former foreign correspondent and a regular contributor to the books pages of the Wall Street Journal. Her Examiner Column appears on Thursdays.
