These pretzels are making me thirsty.
Terry Savage would have gone apoplectic over what my kids are doing right now. They’ve emptied out their piggy bank and they’re out on the deck shouting, “New bank open! Come to the new bank!” I asked them how their bank worked and they said they planned to charge people $1 and each customer could then get as much money as they wanted out of their piggy bank stash.
We just had a short lesson on how banks work. They remain unconvinced and think their idea is better.
Well, if the stash comprises less than a dollar, they’re right.
Ha! Unfortunately, it does not.
There may be a conservative principle at work in Ms. Savage, although calling it a principle is generous - it’s somehwere between an article of faith and a trained response. It is as follows:
**A free society owes its merchant and warrior classes nothing less than unquestioning faith and undivided loyalty. **
Anything else compromises the prosperity and security of the commonweal, the integrity of freedom, and the responsibilities of citizenship. Strawman liberal-bashing is merely one of many means to this end.
I love this. Very cute.
Unless your kids are like, 15.
Credit where it’s due, magellan; I laughed.
That sounds like something Stephen Colbert would say.
Little Nemo Savage is right about Terry Savage being right!
Can I get a harrumph?!
Terry Savage has a new column that provides greater clarity into the fact that she isn’t such a heartless person:
Giving is Great, but Lemonade Stand Should Teach Entrepenurship
Naturally we all misunderstood, but the point remains: Lemonade Stands are where we learn about Capitalism…and Capitalism only!
Nermind the fact that in fact that may not at all be why these little girls or any kids put up a lemonade stand or the fact that it isn’t her friggin place to be giving these kids lessons in entrepeneurship or to somehow equate the downfall of the “American Way” with the fact that these girls were being generous.
I love this paragraph:
So Mrs. Savage recognizes that the girls just wanted to have something to do. It wasn’t some freaking school project. But the presumption that there need to be a lesson in there about what the kids should be getting out of their game and more importantly that she should be the one to teach it is ridiculous.
If Savage had simply writen a column reflecting on the lemonade stand she visited where the kids were giving away free lemonade, something along the lines
“As I enjoyed my free lemonade I got to thinking how the generosity is to be lauded, there would be nothing wrong with charging money as a fine lesson in entrepeneurship. Of couurse, the girls were just playing game and it wasn’t important that they learn that lesson from me at this time. But I certinaly hope it is a lesson they learn sometime, a lesson we can all benefit from…” etc. She may at least not come off as some sort psychotic, self-important windbag.
You had a poor lesson plan. What you should have done is give them a dollar, then take the entire stash.
Then his girls inform him that there’re punitive interest rates hidden in the fine print, enforced by the crazy hobo down the block (and his trusty lead pipe).
Ha!
One of the funnest days of my life was the time my pal threw a goblet of lemons at the staff…
How on earth is what these little girls were doing ‘communisty’? They weren’t taking lemons and sugar and cups from people and killing them if they resisted. They weren’t dictators. And they didn’t insist that everyone share in the lemonade equally.
And they weren’t ‘socialisty’ either. They didn’t implore their neighborhood association to confiscate lemons and sugar and cups from more well-stocked homes in order that they may redistribute them more equally. They weren’t calling anyone ‘selfish’ for wanting to keep the contents of their own pantrys. And they weren’t claiming the whole system had been set up so that some evil numerical minority had a lock on the majority of lemons.
Nope. If anything, what these little girls were is ‘philanthropic’.
I can see why you might consider them communisty though, Gangster Octopus. Such an idea could be called typical of people of that age. Why, I myself, in the third grade and being told I couldn’t get a candy bar from the corner drug store (yes, there really was a drug store on the corner. I had to cross a street to get to it though; it was actually on the nearest corner of the next block. But I digress) because we had to wait for some of my father’s customers to send in their payments and would be out of money until then. I, in my childish naivety, asked my mother why there had to be money in the first place; why didn’t people just go to work and then when they needed something just go to the store and get it? My mother chuckled at the idea and told me things just didn’t work like that.
Eventually I grew up and realized the folly of such a notion. 
Pantries, dammit, pantries!
I hate when I have a good rant going and then screw up the spelling of some word. Why don’t I ever catch this stuff on preview? :smack:
Oh, well…cest la vy.
Given the intensity of your retraction, I thought you might have typed ‘panties.’ I am so disappointed.
“What a dear little lemonade stand! Did you make it all by yourselves? And at your age too! Oh, Hubert, you simply must come and look at this. Such clever children!”
Even in the followup, she’s still missing the point that the girls would be starting with ingredients and materials given to them by their parents.
Thanks. I wish he’d return my calls about the writing job.