Get rich quick scam #49

Okay, let's see how this goes. Hope y'all are not as sick of this post as I am.

All those people who had school spirit grew up to be parents. They are tools.

The people with spirit get tooled as well, and if you've got a certain sort of street smarts (which I haven't), you can screw them like a driver. If you're not particularly shrewd nor are you particularly spirited (ahem) you tolerate it all with bemused arrogance, but you don't participate in the expensive frivolity. Just like in high school.

Parents are easy marks, caring, as we do, about "education" and "curricula" and "extracurricular activities" and all that other happy horeshit. The latter is quite possibly unwise. Going outside to play is as good for the character as those expensive gymnastics lessons might be, and in many ways it's better. For a five-year-old, say, outside is almost certainly better for the little scamp, provided junior isn't a world-class tumbler in the making (oh Christ, have I denied my little Sweetums a single fragile opportunity, oh please God, no!). But off they go just the same. We sign 'em up because it's a bulwark against predators and God forbid we actually interact with the littl'uns. So it's off to the rink with 'em, off to the camp, to the gym, to the studio, to the pool, to the meeting, to the friggin stable. One of those things has got to stick--I've heard anecdotes!

But, like lunches, there's no such thing as a free after-shool activity. The least they'll ask you to do is volunteer, but it's more likely they need cash, and wherever money flows, there's room for middlemen to dip into the stream. You might think that the best way to fund these things would be to--you know--pay for them outright, but here in America we would greatly prefer to consume our way to solvency. Some marketing visionary (quite possibly pioneering the use of the charmingest little sales force out there) discovered he could "support" these noble activities at a (I am not exaggerating) 90% take. But as a parent, who can take a chance?

The parents of said youngsters, guilty of benign negligence as it is, feel positively obligated to buy the crap from the kiddies' catalogue or the junk-box.* It's bad enough we parents are pressured into this lame consumption, but it's highly suggested we solicit those other poor wretches we're forced to see every day. And who else do you think is so pathetic as to actually be lured by the myriad selections of wrapping paper, candles, nuts, and other assorted gifty swill? Other parents, that's who! So if you buy some garbage from my kid's catalogue, I'll buy some from your kid's. So that's two items that each of us felt we had to purchase, for which neither of us had the slightest interest. For my part, the thirty bucks could have been a straight donation and been done with it (or even better, the netted buck-fifty apiece) and felt that warm glow without having to re-gift a stanky candle no one wants.**

So even though it hurts me inside when my little girl gets excited about the comic-book-back-page prizes she could win if she sells however many thousand units, I still get that warm fuzzy knowing that, by not participating, Daddy is building character. After all sweetie, look at your old man. He turned out OK. Right?

Right?

Keifus


*A horrible memory. When I was a member of Lord Powell's young Movementarians I had to truck around giant cardboard suitcases of trinkets for sale. Back then, it was de rigeur to go door-to-door and canvass strangers, before it became acceptable for Mom and Dad to become junior sales associates at their places of employment.

**Interestingly, the only kids that solicit for direct donations are the young cheerleaders outside the liquor store. That's a whole different sort of wrong.