A few months ago, my kids had a lemonade stand in Prospect Park, in the shade of a big tree near the reservoir. Like any young entrepreneurs who have never actually run a small business, it required (a lot) of adult supervision, including getting a bunch of change, buying paper cups and straws, ice, napkins, hauling the folding tables outside, and getting the ingredients for said lemonade. We also made brownies and butter mochi (more ingredients to buy), and Jacob acquired a giant, reusable, glass beverage dispenser on Craigslist for $20, making the startup cost of it all about $75.
The kids were in charge of making the signage, helping bake and make the lemonade, and running the actual stand. We tried to explain the concept of operating costs vs. profit, and that we were being extremely generous by covering all the costs for said stand, which they pretty much ignored and wrote off as basic parental obligation.
Because it is Brooklyn, and because we were in a high traffic area of the park, the kids ended up with over a hundred dollars apiece. It was an amount of money so gloriously large to them that after we sat at the kitchen counter dividing up the money, it truly seemed that the world was at their fingertips.
Unsurprisingly, Julian spent his entire $100+ on Pringles and overpriced Pokemon cards within the first week. Ada, in contrast, meted out her earnings little by little, and still has $9 left in her wallet. At first, she wanted to go to Claire’s and browse. She considered a bucket hat, and a small pouch shaped like a sloth covered in flip sequins. She wanted to go Books are Magic, and considered a few graphic novels, but decided she could get them at the library. She got a pack of gum, a Kawaii-style Neapolitan ice cream sandwich stuffed animal, and a bag of Doritos here and there, each time lording her small new treats and her remaining money over her brother.
Her possession of money became the recurring rationale for why we needed to go look at things, stop in shops, or pop into the bodega. “I just want to see the options, and I will buy it with my own money,” she would insist as she begged to go to Target, as though this request for my time and chaperoning was inconsequential because there’d be no actual demands on my wallet.
This annoys me for a multitude of reasons, probably because of my own anxieties / annoyances about being perpetually marketed to and how consciously I have to tamp down my own thirst for stuff. It reminds me of Eula Biss’ reflections on consumption in her book, Having and Being Had, which NPR described as a book where she “maps out our ease of colluding in capitalism” and the way that work / money / consumption create a fixation both on manufactured value and invented power.
My annoyances are thus: for a kid already obsessed with acquisition, the money became an amplifying and almost desperation-creating force for framing up what she now envisioned that she could have. It became an invitation to itemize all her wants and desires, including such things as “trip to Hawaii” and “to never take the subway again.” LOL. It invited fixation on the sheer power of being able to buy something when her brother could not (and her mother refused to). It also created an overt association between the feeling of short-lived (but extreme) joy and acquisition, which even she could acknowledge was unsatisfying after the fact. Perhaps most depressingly, Ada often acquiesced to her brother’s relative disappointment (tantrums at check-out) by buying him something cheap, disposable, and inferior to whatever she was getting herself, with the rationale that she was being generous and “making him happy.”
All of this makes me look at the world somewhat cynically, like a mall we just can’t get out of. And, as we all know, kids don’t have the maturity of self-regulation or discipline around desire in order to not look at all the shiny objects, which are literally everywhere, IRL and on our screens. (Adults barely do, too).
In a book called The Wrench by Elise Gravel, one of our household’s favorite authors, a bunny named Bob needs a wrench to find his tricycle. He can’t find it amidst all his stuff, so ends up going to the Megamart, a place that has…everything. He becomes so distracted by all the shiny objects that on three separate trips he comes home with singing pajamas, then a refrigerator hat, then a screaming machine, and perpetually forgets to get the wrench, the one thing he needs to actually fix his tricycle. He’s so overcome by shiny new object syndrome he loses all focus and sight of end goal to desire.
There’s so much fixation on the way that screens are disruptive and problematic for children, but much less focus on the way that consumption / consumerism become a trap of another kind of distraction. A trap of wanting and needing, a trap of constant individualized need, and a trap of needing pleasure and novelty all the time, and then of course the trap of needing more money.
Ada has fittingly proposed that we do another lemonade stand before the summer’s out. “I think we should have lemonade, and cookies, and bracelets,” she specifies. “But this time, I want to do it alone…so I can make even more money.” Also, she reminds us, “you still owe me allowance for this week.”
Recommendations
To watch: I rewatched Ladybird last week and it’s 100% the best Greta Gerwig.
To indulge in: All the #rushtok #bamarush content on Anne Helen Petersen’s instagram about sorority rush at the University of Alabama. (Check the highlights) Truly cannot wait for the full analysis.
Relatedly, to watch: “Bama Rush,” the movie by documentarian Rachel Fleit on Netflix which is bizarre and imperfect but also interesting. I wish it were a 10-part series that went deeper on all levels.
To eat at: Brooklyn Kolache. Perfect breakfast pastry / good coffee / wifi situation in Bed-stuy.
To enjoy: These hand-painted tiles of Maude Smith that I’d put in the future bathroom or kitchen of my dreams.
To make: This sugar snap pea salad with mint, radishes, and ricotta salata (or feta, as you wish).
That’s all for this week. Send me all your movie recs pls. Old / new / whatever. I’m in desperate need of some fresh recs.
Movie rec: Brooklyn with Saoirse Ronan
I’m also heavily invested in Bama Rush content.