Joy Coins

Ever get a wild idea you know won’t work, but you just can’t shake it?

Some of those ideas, I pre-label as “bad ideas.” When I look into them and realize they aren’t going to work out, I’m not disappointed. It was a bad idea from the start.

I recently ran one of those bad ideas by my brother.

Every year in The Dalles, we have the “Cherry Festival”. We have a parade, carnival and lots of people milling about downtown. People pay for booths and sell things. It’s a regular fun fair.

I had this bad idea to buy a bunch of classic giant lollipops and sell them to kids from a booth.

After all, what kid could resist a giant lollipop? Those things would sell themselves.

My brother set up a booth for his side business last year. So, I asked him for his thoughts

He confirmed: it was a bad idea.

“You better be happy getting paid in joy coins.” We walked through it. Sure enough, the return wasn’t going to be worth the effort. But, there is something to say about seeing the joy on a kids face when they get a giant piece of candy. So the only real payment would be seeing happy children.

“You’ll be imprisoned in this booth the whole time while your kids are out having fun and your missing all of it.”

You’re kids are only young once.

As corny as this event is, it is a special time. A time to spoil the kids with carnival rides, eating crappy food and just generally letting loose.

Maybe when my hair is gray I can get paid in “joy coins” selling giant lollipops to kids. For now I’ll stick to to getting paid in joy coins from my own kids.