Ask not what your school can do for you, but how much overpriced, plastic crap you can sell for your school!

Apparently, I grew up in a charmed time and place. A time when it was okay for me to ride my bike the ten blocks to the Dairy queen and buy a Dilly Bar; a time when you knew you had to be good, even if your parents weren’t around, because chances were the neighbors were watching you (and not in a pervy way, either); a time when there were actually GOOD cartoons on the TV on Saturday mornings, but they ended at 11am (and really, the good ones were over by ten), so you went outside for the rest of the day.

A time when I didn’t have to sell plastic garbage to raise money for new playground equipment, or art supplies, or whatever.

Maybe I just got off lucky, but until I was in middle school I never had to sell a thing besides liquor at my dad’s store (HAHA! Kidding! Sort of). I wasn’t a Girl Scout, or a Bluebird, or a Campfire girl. I didn’t play on a sports team. And while I did go to a small parochial school, we were self sufficient insomuch as parents were expected to provide everything. I do mean everything. The school supply list for St. Mary’s vaguely resembled a stock count report for the local supply store. We went beyond a box of crayons and Big Chief tablet to “full set of tempera paints, five color” and “band-aids, multi size, two boxes”. I’d be willing to bet that they contemplated adding “toilet paper, your brand preference, four roll pack” to the list, but opted against it due to the sheer warfare that would occur between those rocking the Charmin and those suffering the booty indignation of store brand sandpaper.

What it all boils down to is that never in my early childhood years did I have to schlep from door to door with a box of candy bars or catalog of wrapping papers and cookie dough, begging my family and neighbors to help support the cause. And it would have been me out there- my parents wouldn’t have dreamed of selling for me. “Builds character,” my father would have said of me knocking on the door of the scary House on the Corner. “They won’t eat you.” (That’s because the people in the scary House on the Corner only ate PETS. Duh.) If I had intended on selling to my parents’ coworkers, it would have been my butt up there, walking from office to office, knocking on doors and saying “Excuse me, may I please ask you a question? Do you have enough wrapping paper and plastic kitsch in your life?”

Today, of course, everything has changed. Now schools fundraise from the time kids walk in the door until the week before school gets out. And if you don’t get enough from your school, you’ll surely be sitting pretty when your child’s football/soccer/baseball/softball/water polo team launches their semi-annual fundraiser…. To be followed, naturally, by every other extracurricular activity your child has ever even considered being a part of.

“Mom, I have to sell potpourri for the Turtle Scouts of America.”
“But you’re not a Turtle Scout.”
“Yeah, but I took a brochure at Back to School night, and now I owe them $4,483. Would you prefer the vanilla jasmine or the Rainy Day Blues?”

The worst really are the school fundraisers. They herd the entire school into the auditorium, piquing their excitement over the mid-day change in events. There, a perky pitchwoman tells the kids about how EXCITING it will be when their school gets their VERY OWN , and won’t that be GREAT? But the ONLY POSSIBLE WAY they can get their Important Item, is by raising money, and OBVIOUSLY, the BEST WAY to do that is by selling this overpriced crap! And for every $100 you raise ($10 of which will go to the school), you get your VERY OWN PRIZE worth approximately five cents!!!! And if you sell enough, you could ride in a LIMO to school (after dark, when no one is looking, obviously)!!!! By this time the kids are in an absolute frothing frenzy, and many lives are put at risk with the resulting stampede for their own special Packet O’ Junk. Later that afternoon, my son will walk confidently into the house, drop the catalogue on the table, and boldly pronounce “Without Sell-O-Rama fundraisers, our school wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. We’ve got to get out there and SELL SELL SELL!”

Naturally, in these troubled times we don’t allow kids to sell door to door, even in their own neighborhood. In fact, right on the front of the 47 pound fundraising packet (want to know why the rainforests are depleting? Blame fundraising.) it says, in bold, bold letters as if to imply you are not only stupid, but quite possibly a blind chimpanzee “WARNING: DO NOT ALLOW YOUR CHILD TO GO DOOR TO DOOR TO SELL. THIS IS A DANGEROUS PRACTICE AND COULD RESULT IN YOUR BELOVED OFFSPRING BEING EATEN BY THE PEOPLE IN THE SPOOKY HOUSE ON THE CORNER. DON’T SAY WE DIDN’T WARN YOU."

Instead, the kids are encouraged to sell to family members and friends and to “ask Mom and Dad to take the brochure into Work!!!!” So after you’ve called Grandma and Grandpa (who are trying to figure out the cookie dough conversion for their 401K in their retirement years), Aunt Cindy and Uncle Joe, it’s up to Mom and Dad to make up the slack. It’s clever, really. They know that if they directly ask the parents to do the selling we’d pelt them with last year’s leftover Macadamia Bars. So we end up lugging catalogues and forms to the office, only to find that everyone else is also hawking their own goods. So a barter system breaks out.

“If you’ll buy three Krunchie Bars to send Kaitlin to Science City, I’ll buy a pound of Chocolate Giggle Drops to send Jacob to the soccer Octofinals in Schenectady.”

“I’m already buying five Krunchie bars from Jim in Accounts. Do you have any Caramel Strudel Bars?”

In essence, it’s no different from buying your own kid’s stuff, but it makes us feel better because, in a roundabout way, we’re helping others. And it looks better on your kid’s order form to see fifteen names rather than just “Mom- 438 Krunchie Bars.”

I tried to circumvent the system one year by just asking if I could donate money. “The school will get more that way,” I reasoned to the shocked PTA rep. “I’d just rather give $25 off the bat and not have to fundraise, than have to sell $500 for the school to make $25.”

She looked me up and down, she in her fashionable jeans and sweater set, I in my fleece pants that, if deconstructed, could warm a small African village and not quite matching pull over. “I don’t understand. Do you not want to do the fundraiser?”
“No, not particularly. I’d rather just give you the money.”

“But the fundraiser is so much fun! And the kids get prizes!”

“I’ll take him to the dollar store. Or the county fair. But I’d rather just give you the money now.”

Good effort, no success. We ended up selling ten items so my son could get the Super Bouncy Ball…. Just like the one he paid fifty-cents for at Pizza Street.

Now my youngest son is fundraising too, for his preschool. Trash bags. I called the PTA president to make sure, and yes, they’re huge rolls of trash bags for $10. Industrial strength. Apparently this is a very, very popular fundraiser for the school.

I bet so. This is something you can use…. For all of those other fundraising packets.