Did you always like the lunch your mother packed for you during those long-ago school years? Did your classmates’ lunches look better than the same old boring stuff you pulled from your lunch sack?
If so, you were not alone. But there was a solution. Let me tell you what my son Tom thought up.
If Tom had paid as much attention to his schoolwork as he did in goofing off, he might have been a rocket scientist or at least the vice president. Not so. Goofing off was his specialty.
We all knew someone like that in school. Watching reruns of Johnny Carson and his interactions with long ago comedians reinforced the idea that comedians are made, not born. Most of them admitted to being the class clown. We all want to be liked. Some will attain that goal any way they can. Goofing off can become a specialty.
Tom started school with a disadvantage. There were two schools with kindergarten classes in our area. Tom was assigned to one of them. When the teacher read her class roster, she knew there was no way she could survive a year with that mix. Almost all her would-be students were boys. Girls are sweet and kind and loving, or so they say. Boys are just plain full of hell.
There was a solution to her problem. Trade some of the boys for girls at the other school. It worked out well for her, but not for Tom.
He felt he had been singled out as a troublemaker and shoved aside. I didn’t learn that this was his attitude until years later. I guess you could say he resented the label. Unfortunately, acting out only reinforced that teacher’s attitude. Pulling the fire alarm in middle school was an example.
I have taken the long way around to addressing a problem. This all happened in middle school. Tom was a frequent visitor to the principal’s office. I was at a loss as what to do.
Suddenly, his behavior seemed to improve. I was elated. I didn’t know the cause, just grateful. My peace of mind didn’t last long. I was called to the principal’s office again.
Tom had become a businessman. Yup! During the lunch hour he was selling flavored toothpicks at ten cents each. Doing a land office business, to boot.
Let me explain. He sold two flavors. One was cinnamon and the other was hot sauce. Tom dipped the toothpicks in a bottle of each; then took them out, dried the toothpicks and packaged them for resale.
Sack lunches were being ignored. Money that was supposed to buy milk went for the flavored toothpicks. Somehow parents figured out why their kids were not eating their packed lunches. They also needed more milk money.
Tom was told this could not go on. He was ordered to stop. Did he? Well, maybe for a while. But it was too good a racket to let fall by the wayside. What happened then?
We moved from the area. The new school had a cafeteria. The market for flavored toothpicks was not there. Tom was out of business.