funforkids

    Don’t you just love the school candy drives and fund raisers that have you hitting-up your friends, families and co-workers for both their money and their pitty.  As a teacher I saw first hand the “BIG SHOW” that the actual companies put on in the school auditorium to get the kids hyped up and ready to go out and make those big sales.  Let me paint you a picture of the company’s sales pitch to your children and mine:

       The stage of the auditorium is full of those fabulous prizes; you know the ones:  The huge boom-box, the pin mall machine, The Ipod Shuffle, The karaoke machine with flashing lights and other huge valuable prizes.  Then unseen to our children’s adorable little eyes are the cheap less than a dollar prizes that each seller gets as long as they sell at least $15 or so of their merchandise.   The amped up man pics up the microphone and says:  HEY KIDS!!!  A hush falls over the crowd but still a few kids can be heard saying:  “I WANT THE…”  All settle down and he begins his speech.  The pep talk usually begins with something like this:  “What do you think of all these prizes up here?”  ROOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRR goes the crowd of excited children.   “What if I told you that you could win one of these great prizes today?”  YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH! proclaim our kids.  “You could win one these great prizes by becoming salespeople for our company’s great products.”  The spokesperson then begins to tell the kids about the various prizes and how everyone will win a prize for selling just one item.  The kids are also told that they should not go door to door because it is dangerous and that they should have a family member help them.  “ASK your PARENTS to take the envelope to work and sell it for you.  ASK your parents to call Auntie Jennie and Uncle Bob and have them do some early holiday shopping.”  After all is said and done, the kids are released from the auditorium with envelope in hand and ready to sell a ketchup lollipop to a woman in a white dress.  They come home to us with the great news that WE “have to take the envelope to EVERYONE we know and sell a zillion things so they can get the limited edition Mercedes which although was not on stage is available to the one who sells a trillion dollars worth of candy and/or wrapping paper.”  Of course I exaggerate –a little.  Being the wonderful parents we are, we want our children to get a great prize so we look at the contents of the envelope and see that once again the prices for the items are higher than they should be and that the level of the prizes are completely unrealistic.  Most of the items are worth 90 percent less than the amount of items the kids actually sell.  However, we do our best to sell at least $25 to $35 worth of the stuff so that the kids get at least the second level prize which  is the choice of  three things:  Cheap, paper-thin bingo cards with cardboard chips, a pen with a fuzzy head and google eyes, or the package of mini midget markers that last about a week.   This year we managed to sell $230 worth of wrapping paper, jewelry and candy and my son’s prize was a square color change alarm clock which is adorable really—but not even worth $5.  Don’t you just love it. 

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