I Coulda Been Donald Trump

I just had a grape Pixy Stix. I forgot how much I like those things. It brought back a memory from my childhood. I haven’t thought about this for years.

When I was in 1st grade (yes, a long time ago) we would save pennies so we could stop at the neighborhood candy shop on the way to school. It was one of those Mom & Pop penny candy places, a lot like the ones you see in old movies. Big old glass jars of all kinds of yummy kids stuff.

On this particular day, I had at least a dime, if I remember right. What I do remember is that I could buy a lot of Pixy Stix. I got a pile of them. During school, we couldn’t eat candy, so when lunch time came around, I was Mr. Popular. I was giving the things away.

Soon though, I realized that I was running out, so I stopped handing them out. (I wanted to save some for later.) To my surprise, some of the other kids started offering me money for them. What a concept! That hadn’t occurred to me at all! Being just 6 years old, I really didn’t understand the value of money, so when kids with coins started lining up, I just told them that I would take any coin they had for a Pixy Stix. Some were pennies, some dimes, one even a quarter. I remember being amazed that a kid my age even had a quarter.

After I got home, I remember counting the loot. It totaled $.60! I had scored an additional $.50, even after I had given out a lot of free candy! I quickly hid the loot in the bottom of my toy bin and began to plan my rise to financial bliss. It seemed to me if I could make that much on a $.10 stash, a $.60 stash would make me rich.

Needless to say, on the way to school, I bought all the Pixy Stix I could get. I ended up selling a lot of them and making even more money. I began to do this daily and it never occurred to me to wonder how my patrons seemed to have change every day. I was going to be a millionaire.

So eventually, the Teacher got wise to me. She contacted my parents and several of the other kid’s parents to make sure nothing bad was happening, like the kids stealing to get their fix. Nothing bad was happening. She was watching and saw that I really didn’t know the value of the money or where the kids were getting it, so I didn’t get into any trouble. I just had to shut down all operations. I was bummed.

So there’s my initial venture into capitalism. It was quite a successful venture. If I hadn’t picked school as my place of business, I just might have made my fortune young and be retired already. Ahh, the inexperience of youth!