Halloween is always a big event in my household. My daughter's a teenager now, and which costume she should wear has become progressively less contentious as my wife and I play little to no role in the selection process. But trick or treating has faded in our neighborhood, and though I've got a giant bag of candy just in case, I wonder whether I'm tossing away cash for no reason.
My daughter has no such doubts. In fact, from a school trip Saturday, she texted me repeatedly to remind me to buy candy. I was wondering why she was so concerned when my wife clued me in. Last year, going to pick her up at an evening program my daughter was in, she was shocked to find a huge crowd blocking her at the door.
"What's going on?" she asked.
"It's your daughter," someone replied.
Panicked, she pushed her way to the center of the crowd, to find my daughter, with a pen and a notebook, collecting 50 cents a piece for leftover Halloween candy and carefully noting sales records. Apparently she turned my $10 investment in candy into about 50 bucks. My wife asked, "How can you charge so much for this?"
"Let them go to the supermarket if they want to get it cheaper," was my daughter's answer.
For my wife's friend and two kids, there was no discount, even at my wife's request. A buck and a half. My wife got my daughter back by making her pay for her own lunch the next day. Everyone in my house is a businessperson except me.
Posts
