Free Enterprise

For Sale: one bow and arrow (with the string broken), one foam cup holder (given out as a promotion by the hospital), 2 flat balls, one nerf ball with chunks taken out of it, one tape measure (another free sample promotional item from a health fair), and one small action figure, acquired from the neighbors and never played with.

Dallin decided to have his own little garage sale this afternoon. Unfortunately, the selection of merchandise was not what he hoped it would be, considering that Mommy wouldn't give him permission to sell any of our "nice" toys...or anything that technically belonged to Sariah. But he pressed on with all the faith in the world that he would make enough money to buy a "really cool toy".

See now, isn't this tape measure exactly what you've been looking for?

Dallin had one customer early on, our 8-year-old neighbor, K. Dallin came rushing in excitedly to tell me that K wanted to buy something--anything! While K went home to get his money, I quizzed Dallin about his prices. He told me he was charging $11 for the big, flat ball. His reasoning was that he'd paid $10 for it, so of course he needed to make a profit. ($10??? I seem to remember it being around $3 or $4.) I told him that there was no way he could sell his stuff for prices like that. "Yeah, I can," he retorted. "I can charge whatever I want!" Well, true. But I informed him that no way was I going to let K get ripped off like that.

Luckily, K seemed to get sidetracked between his house and ours because we never saw him again.

And then the ice cream truck bell was heard far down the street, and Dallin decided that the dollar he already had in his money holder was sufficient for any purchase he wished to make today!