Childish Pursuits

There has been much ado around here about a little girl selling lemonade at a street fair who got shut down by the board of health. It’s one of those things that the news loves to highlight in order to test the polarity of the community. The anti-government folks can rail against the reach of petty bureaucracy. The pro-child faction can bemoan the loss of entrepreneurial opportunity for eight year olds, and the health conscious can shudder at the possibility for contagion. But it started me thinking about the things I did to make money as a child. Although there was formal employment that adults controlled, such as babysitting and paper routes, most of our enterprises were designed to extract money and goods from each other.

Back in the baby boom years of the sixties, we were old-fashioned enough to engage in games that rewarded success with the amassing of certain tangible, non-currency assets. So, there were the titans of jacks, marbles, and for the boys, baseball cards. These pursuits were usually specific to certain years and grades, but when the fever hit, like tulip fortunes in Holland, it was all we did, all the time.

Occasionally, a group of friends would band together to design an entertainment we called a carnival. We would set up games of chance, gather prizes, advertise, and open our doors in a backyard decorated with sheets and Christmas garlands and strings of lights, to help customers part with their money. I have no idea where the model for this came from, but it was effective in drawing participants, because who wouldn’t want to try for a chance to win a rubberband ball, or some really cool toy soldiers? Sometimes the carnival would offer lemonade or cookies, but adults were far away from these enterprises, Mom only noticing several days later that the packets of Kool-Aid she bought to last the week were nowhere to be found.

For many adults, we try our hardest to superimpose our recalled childhood on today’s children, with results such as the lemonade stand described above. It’s hard to know how to innoculate children with the freedom and curiosity we remember, and at the same time keep them absolutely safe.