Jill's Journal: A 'kidpreneuer' ahead of my time

I was a “kidpreneuer” ahead of my time. While we didn’t have the fancy name to define just what we were doing back then, my long-time friend of 51 years, Trish, and I were always trying to scrounge up a nickel or two. And we surely weren’t timid about “working for a living”

Like many of you I suspect, we stirred up pitchers of Kool-Aid, set up shop curbside and proudly served up the sugary goodness to the neighborhood kids, all for a few pennies’ profit.

When the pitcher was empty and our pockets were “full”, we’d close up shop and head straight for the penny candy aisle where we were like “two kids in a candy store” excited to completely wipe out the days’ profits.

We also took our business practice on the road from time to time by going door-to-door selling pages of pictures from our coloring books that we made sure to do our best work on by coloring within the lines, or should I say, Trish mostly colored. Apparently, she professed to possess more talent with a crayon in hand than I, so I was relegated more to the business side of things – marketing, advertising, and keeping track of the coins in our cash box. 

Once we had a stack of pictures ready to market, we hit the neighborhood, knocking on doors, hawking our wares for a few pennies, sometimes a nickel or a dime. 

We knew our audience – the neighborhood – pretty well and exactly who was willing to fork over a few copper or silver-toned coins. Sometimes, our customers forwent selecting one of our crayon-colored masterpieces and simply dropped a coin or two into our money-hungry hands so they could get back to whatever it was we’d interrupted them doing.

I also remember a time when my brother, Bob, Trish and Joy, who’s grandma lived nearby, made the decision to stage a play for the neighborhood kids. We wrote the script, assigned the parts, rehearsed, gathered costumes and props, advertised and sold tickets to somewhat of a “packed front yard”. But when it came time for the curtain to rise, all we could do was look at one another and giggle. The hour or so we’d dedicated to rehearsing our lines turned out to be a wasted hour. And as for our audience, well, they wanted a refund.

As for us, we determined a Kool-Aid stand was a whole lot easier - and less embarrasing - way to make a kids’ living.