Recently, the administrators at our middle school decided
that they hate all the parents of all the kids at the school, so they held a
cookie dough fundraiser to punish us.
The evil geniuses who invented the modern school cookie
dough fundraiser knew how to get kids fired up about pestering their parents into
giving up all their afternoon/evening free time to take them “to the
neighborhood across the street where we don’t know anyone because I’ve already
gone to every single house in our neighborhood and I still need to get five
more sales to get the super balloon.”
At least, the evil geniuses certainly knew how to get Son
Number Two fired up. Son Number One could not have cared less about the super balloon.
The stupid, cheap, Chinese, dollar store prizes associated
with every level of cookie dough salesmanship suck Son Number Two in like a
ping pong ball into a shop vac. He’s been to the Dollar Tree a million times,
so he knows damned well how much the crap in the little student catalog actually
costs, yet it never occurs to him to just ask me for five bucks. Instead, he
wants to go knock on a hundred and eighty doors.
And do you know what’s even better than that? I found out
yesterday that the administrators at our elementary
school decided that they hate all the parents of all the kids at the school,
too. Guess what Son Number Three brought home? Yep, the cookie dough fundraiser
package. Are you kidding me!? I just got done with this nightmare.
And guess who Son Number Three thinks is really cool? Yep,
Son Number Two. So guess what Son Number Three wants to do?
Yep. “Dad, I want to sell thirty so I can get the *insert the name of some useless plastic toy
that will break within the first three minutes of him owning it, that would
cost roughly seventy-two cents to purchase, but will require two hundred hours
of my life to obtain*.”
We just did this!!! We’re going to have to drive to a
neighborhood in another school district and just mumble the name of the school
we’re fundraising for.
And let’s just forget the fact that I don’t want to do this
for a second. Why do I have to do this at all? I don’t even understand the need
for public school fundraisers in the first place. We live in America. We have
more money than all the other countries combined.
We have so much money, we feel compelled to give a lot of it
away to other countries every year. I assume those countries that receive
foreign aid from the U.S. use some of it for their schools, but they also use a
lot of it for stuff like new home furnishings and vacations for their top
officials, too. How do we know this to be true? Because our top officials taught
them how to get away with it.
And here I am in the U.S., watching my tax dollars going to
buy President-for-Life Otawanabe of Guyana a new Barcalounger, while simultaneously
having to stand on the sidewalk with my best “I’m sorry I brought him to your
house” expression on my face while my son begs our neighbors for eighteen bucks
in exchange for $1.29-worth of cookie dough. That’s just no way to live.
So, here’s my idea. Let’s stop all the foreign aid programs
immediately. Instead of sending blank checks all over the world, we’ll set up the
World School Checking Account. Any elementary, middle, or high school on the
planet that needs money can just write a check. Money for anything – no questions
asked - from a single box of copier paper to an entirely new campus with fifty
state-of-the-art buildings – whatever. Get them whatever they need, and the
checking account will still have loads of money to spare.
That way, every kid on earth can get a good education, and
eventually none of those countries will need foreign aid anymore, and I can
stop schlepping with my kids all over town begging for money in exchange for
dough.
Anyway, I’ll probably be over to your place with Son Number
Three around dinnertime.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen
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