No Lemonade Stands For This 8-Year Old Entrepreneur!

Audrey with her little sister, Avery

My daughter and her family moved into a new neighborhood not long ago. Their home is beautiful and they take good care of it, inside and out. Their kids are also very well behaved. In other words, they are a great asset to their community. 

When my daughter and her family moved into this new neighborhood, neighbors recognized their asset-ness and warned them about some of the other neighbors, even though the tattletales didn't really know much about my daughter and her family, except for their well-behaved children and the way they kept their home. 

I like that sense of community. I remember the day I moved into my neighborhood – the one where I now reside. One of my neighbors rushed over to meet me WHILE I was moving in. I learned from her that the prior residents had raucous parties every night and that the police practically lived in my home before the previous residents were kicked out of the community. Happy to hear that the only parties I would hold would be during the daytime and would include multiple young children, my neighbor went home satisfied.

I'm not sure how the small country community of neighbors reacted to what my granddaughter did the other day in her new neighborhood, though. I can only assume that the idea my granddaughter devised came from a present I bought her brother, my grandson, for his birthday last year (or was it the year before). I had ordered for him a bunch of plain white masks from a school supply company. The masks came with all kinds of markers, crayons, and stickers he could use to decorate the masks. It was a cute project and my grandson invited some of my other grandchildren to decorate them with him, allowing them to keep the masks they created.

The other day, my 8-year-old granddaughter told the neighborhood kids they could buy a mask from her for $.25. Surprisingly they all ran home to ask for quarters to buy her masks. But the masks weren't the masks I'd purchased for her younger brother. They were masks she cut out herself from ordinary paper, complete with hand-cut eye holes. 

After the neighborhood kids paid her, she gave them their plain paper masks and told them to color them. One little 6 year old (who just happened to be one of the kids the neighbors warned my daughter about) was appalled at the holy paper he held in his hands. With mouth agape, he glared at my granddaughter and shouted, "What a ripoff! They're not even real!"

I couldn't help but laugh about what I thought the neighbors might think when, after hearing that their children had just bought hand-cut paper masks for a quarter – that they had to color themselves – what else these new neighborhood children would try to sell them.

But I also couldn't help but be inspired by my granddaughter's entrepreneurial spirit. Both of her parents own their own businesses. I have a feeling one day she will too (probably not selling hand cut paper masks though).

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