We recently learned that our 12-year old son has been selling addictive substances at his school. What parent wants to learn that? But as it turns out, the more we learned the more we laughed.
Our son attends an international school. Earlier this year he discovered that his classmates crave a sugary candy called Air Heads. Especially the British and Asian kids, of whom there are many. You cannot buy Airheads outside of the United States, which probably says something about their obscene sugar content and addictive nature. Our son’s entrepreneurial antennae went up. His class is full of sugar addicts. Sugar supply is limited. What to do?
So he purchased (with our permission) a few boxes of AirHeads when we were in the US. The unit cost per candy was 10 cents apiece. Then he sold them at his school (without our permission) for $1 apiece – a 900% mark up! In business terms, he has a monopoly. In parental terms, he is exploiting his classmates. In ethical terms, this is highly questionable. In any case, the little rascal made $100 in his first day of “dealing”!
By the next morning, a horde of kids had gathered around our son’s locker. So much so that he had to employ two of his friends as “security”. Alas these friends are also British, so they don’t have cool street names like J-Dawg: they are Sebastien and Jeffrey. And, as Brits, their primary means of enforcement is class-based shaming. Regardless, our boy had got his English homies working the corner.
Over dinner, our son noted that he had developed a few “key accounts”, notably a girl named Sonja. Sonja bought $50 worth of AirHeads on the first day. I asked our son if he had given Sonja a discount. “I gave her the first one for free” he said. “You gotta hook the fish before they bite”.
I asked our son if he paid his enforcer friends. “No dad” he said, “They just work for the candy”.
I asked our son if he was helping himself to any of the candy. “No dad”, he said, “You never try your own supply”. What? Where is he learning this? Has he been watching The Wire?!!!
He actually made so much money that we made him do a business plan. He did one, and showed us his budget for reinvestment, savings, expenditures, and charitable contributions. At our insistence he has curtailed his dealing activities, for now. But he has recently joined the school “Entrepreneur Club” where he hopes – and this is a direct quote – “To make some real money”. Love that boy.
We reckon that our son is either our ticket to an early retirement, or that we have a future prison visit ministry.