Book 'Em, Danno!

Good Morning Gentle Readers,

It happened in an upscale beach town that decades ago oozed a colloidal stench of big city sewage treatment swizzled with near-lethal doses of refinery hydrocarbons. You didn't need GPS or a Chamber of Commerce welcome sign to know you had crossed the city line.

These days the air is permeated by a different sort of odor that's more difficult to detect but  smells just as bad.

The kids down the street from the local junior high came up with a brilliant business plan to sell homemade lemonade and sweeties to the older kids as they passed by the house on their way home from school. Things went amazingly well and the stand was popular and successful. Then. ONE (count 'em) parent complained to the school.

• You might think the offended parent would talk to the entrepreneurial 1st and 3rd graders running the stand (or the parents). But you would be wrong.
• You might think that the offended parent would, well, act all parental and stuff and instruct his/her children not to patronize the lemonade stand. But you would be wrong.
• You might think the school administrators would have had a chat with the parents of our little Horatio Algers. You would, again, be wrong.

THE ADMINISTRATORS CALLED THE POLICE! Worse. The cops actually showed up and shut them down. Because, it is a crime to sell candy and lemonade in front of your house. And, this little upscale beach town doesn't actually have any real crime like say, rape, burglary, robbery, child abuse, or assault, so the police have plenty of resources to devote to scofflaws (used that word twice in two days) such as these scruffy little brats.

Hey, it's a free country, ain't it?

As Ever,

TWC

names withheld at the request of the source