When I was a kid (pre-teen) about the only way I ever earned any money was by working my tail off in my Grandma’s yard pulling weeds or hauling mountains of dirt one wheelbarrow at a time. A buck an hour back then was good money and I believe in most cases Grandma received her money’s worth…
Well, the other day Tanner and his friend decided they needed to make some money of their own. And soon a plan was formed. Did it involve hard laborious work? Nah, they decided to gather up a few pockets full of gravel rocks, taking care to pick a few unique ones that may contain “crystals”, and then proceeded to go door-to-door on our street offering these fine stones to the neighbors for the bargain price of $0.50 each!
And it worked.
They made just under $10.00 and had they not stopped at home to brag, who knows what their haul would have been. I couldn’t believe it.
I won’t lie, my reaction wasn’t what they’d expected. I was upset. I wasn’t pleased that they would bother the neighbors with what amounted to “begging” in my book. We already get enough “little beggers” ringing our doorbell trying to sell us overpriced candy or raffle tickets for some kind of fund raiser, and the thought of my kids selling worthless rocks really irked me.
So I set in motion the process of re-visiting each neighbor with Tanner in tow and having him return the money and apologize. And that is when I realized I had overreacted a little bit. The neighbors didn’t act annoyed in the slightest. They just wanted to help the kids out, and one of them even said she thought it was good “Entrepreneurial spirit”.
In the end, they understood my position (even if they disagreed) and the money was returned. I felt the kids needed to put in more work to earn the money, and offered to let the kids help with yard work or any other chores they may have. One of them actually accepted and let Tanner pull some weeds from her flower bed (for which he kept the $5 she’d paid him earlier!).
I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did to the whole thing. Maybe I should have been proud of them.
What I do know is that I have some very kind hearted neighbors living nearby. I also know I’ll think differently the next time another “little begger” shows up at my door.