BECAUSE YR NEVER TOO YOUNG TO BE A CORPORATE FELON

[defrog]

ITEM: Two sisters, aged 11 and 3, open a fruit/vegetable stand on a residential street corner – and are shut down by the cops after someone complains to the mayor’s office.

The official reason: the stand causes traffic problems, and is also a violation of residential zoning laws.

Clayton Mayor Gregg Manning explains why it’s important to enforce the law no matter what:

"They may start out with a little card-table and selling a couple of things, but then who is to say what else they have. Is all the produce made there, do they make it themselves? Are they going to have eggs and chickens for sale next?”

Yes. Imagine the horror.

He has a point. When I was nine, my sister and I started a Kool-Aid stand to raise some cash. By sundown, we’d put Kroger’s out of business. And remember the spiraling inflation of the early 70s? That was us. Our bad.

For more information on how American childhood has evolved into a “no fun allowed” zone where everything is illegal or bad for you, see this column from the LA Times on the death of the term “go out and play”. It asks a very good question: is America really a more dangerous place than it was when we were kids, or are parents simply more afraid?

Personally, I suspect the latter, but then I don’t have kids. Those of you who are actually parents, I’d be interested in yr thoughts on this.

Let’s blow this pop stand,

This is dF

Comments

[jasonfranks.livejournal.com]

I'm sure American cities are more dangerous than they were, but...

I spent the first ten years of my childhood in Johannesburg. Me and my friend used to play otuside all the time. And I don't mean int he garden, I mean, we bicycled all over, we toured the neighborhood jumping from rooftop to rooftop, we went trespassing on work sites and in construction zones... and it was normal, and nobody was paranoid.

You can't do that now--in the Joburg of today it's not safe to be out in the street, even as an adult. But I severely doubt that the Johannesburg I grew up during the apartheid era, in the period when a State of Emergency was raised--was any less dangerous than any of America's worst cities today.

-- JF

Johannesburg nI gravely doubt that Johannesburg then was lkes sdangerous than US cities