Saturday morning I had coffee with my debate coach and his wife at a little Starbucks in the middle of a Barnes & Noble bookstore. It was awesome, but you probably realize that has nothing to do with little girls, maple leaves, or entrepreneurship. Thus I will not talk about my coffee date here, but rather the drive home from this coffee date.
I’m on this little back road when suddenly I hear kiddos making some enormous racket. Slowing down to see what's going on, I see three little girls standing on the inside of a waist high wire fence, jumping up and down on broken lawn chairs, and madly waving a wet piece of cardboard.
Being the inquisitive individual I am I realize it’s not the normal Saturday activity of youngsters to jump around with wet cardboard at fences. Hmm… maybe they were trying to sell something, but there wasn’t a lemonade stand like I often see around my neighborhood. Regardless, I turn around and pull over to go talk to them.
As I walk up to the fence, I see their cardboard sign reads in big bold sharpie markerings, “LEAFS FOR OXYGEN!” (leafs for $0.25 you get 20 leafs)
Ah. Now I get it. The wet cardboard is a marketing campaign. Needless to say I am impressed.
“Hey girls, I see you’re selling leaves, huh?”
“Oh yes,” pipes up the ringleader, “They help you breathe, and you get 20 of them for $0.25”
“Ah, well I have a dollar here. So, could I please have a dollars worth of leaves?”
“Whoa…” gasps the littlest one. “That’s… uh… whoa. That’s 80 leaves!”
The ringleader speaks again, “Wow, that’s so much money, we should just give her the whole bag!”
They hand me a giant Ziploc bag full of leaves (the bag probably cost more than I paid for the leaves, haha). I smile and say thank you, and head back to my car. As I open my door, I hear one of them yell, “We’re rich! Let’s go get more leaves!” Two of them race back to collect leaves while the other starts jumping up and down with the wet cardboard again.
Now, I understand that I may have been the only consumer of their extremely valuable product that day, but even so, it was an amazing experience. They were probably able to buy a whole candy bar and a half with that dollar I gave them, but more importantly, maybe it sparked some imagination. I remember selling flowers and paper airplanes and shredded newspapers to relatives at family get togethers when I was that age. It may have been stupid, but I’ll never forget the feeling of one of my imaginative ideas being successful.
So, this was my story about little girls, maple leaves, and promoting entrepreneurship. Maybe someday one of them will own a multi-million dollar company, and will remember me, and will give me a million dollars for buying their leaves when they were seven.
Okay, maybe that’s a bit dramatic. Oh well. At least I can breathe better now with my oxygen promoting leafs.
[By the way, if you get the sudden feeling your air passages are constricted at an astronomical capacity, I brought the bag of oxygen leafs back to school with me and I'm willing to share. Please note that this request should only be made under situations of genuine medical concern.... Or if you just want one to Scotch tape to your door, that works too.]
